Columnist Mulshine: 'Shutdown Was a Bad Tactic'

The government shutdown, widely blamed on Republican lawmakers, spelled doom for many GOP candidates in this year's elections, according to Paul Mulshine, a columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger.

"The shutdown was just a bad tactic . . . If they had not done that, the entire first two weeks of October would have been occupied with headlines about the Obamacare disastrous roll out," Mulshine told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

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Mulshine believes that without the shutdown, Republican Steve Lonegan would have substantially led in the polls against Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat, in the race for the senate seat of the late Frank Lautenberg.

Likewise, Ken Cuccinelli would have been far ahead of Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor's race, according to the columnist.

"Both those guys would have won. Instead, [the Republicans] stepped on their own headlines, the whole tea party-inspired fringe of the party stepped on their own headlines there, made themselves the story when the story should have been the Obamacare roll out," he said.

"If you're a professional politician, you pick your battles, you pick your headlines. You don't let the media pick your headlines. And that's why this was such a disaster."

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