Answer from the magazine’s campaign blog:

So, a good night for for the lowest denominator, a bad night for the GOP. America got to see a vaguely threatening parade of gun fetishists, flat worlders, Mars Explorers, Confederate flag lovers and zombie-eyed-Bible-wavers as well as various one issue activists hammering their pet causes.

Admittedly, the Mars Explorers are not a big part of the conservative/Republican base, George W. Bush’s and Newt Gingrich’s “Star Trek” fantasies notwithstanding. But gunnies, Bible-believing Christians, and Southerns who believe their forefathers were fighting for something other than slavery make up about (at a guesstimate) three-quarters of the GOP grassroots. The other one-quarter are the hawks and chicken-hawks, but of course the Weekly Standard is not going to criticize them, even though their issue–not guns or the Bible or the Confederate flag–is the millstone around the Republican Party’s neck.