THE HUMILIATING QUESTION FOR THE GOP...:

Fresh off their primary victories this year, a handful of Republican congressional candidates celebrated in an unusual way: They quietly scrubbed their campaign websites.

In Arizona, gone were the Republican Senate nominee's references to being "100% pro-life" and his call for a constitutional amendment to confer "personhood" on all unborn babies. In Washington state, a Republican Senate hopeful removed a section of her site questioning the integrity of the 2020 election. And in a North Carolina House race, a prominent picture of former president Donald Trump and references to being "100% pro-life" and "100% pro-Trump" disappeared from the GOP candidate's website before Labor Day.

Candidates often recalibrate their campaigns and tweak their messages -- the proverbial pivot -- to appeal to a broader electorate after a primary aimed at gaining support from the party's base. But the reinventions by some 2022 candidates are going further, attempting major departures from explicitly stated positions during the primaries to more politically palatable stances for the fall.

"These candidates are finding out that appealing to a general election electorate is very different from appealing to a Republican base," said former Virginia Republican representative Tom Davis, who chaired the House Republican campaign arm when he was in office.

"Voters are going to have to decide if this is a true conversion or if this is just political expedience," he said. "This is not the first time it's happened in American politics and it won't be the last."

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