This is not the establishment you’re looking for

It was predictable. When Tuesday’s primary results from Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio revealed not a single Congressional incumbent lost his or her seat —despite, in the case of so-dubbed establishment Republicans what were seen to be vigorous challenges from the so-dubbed Tea Party right — media outlets couldn’t help themselves. “The empire strikes back” was too obvious a headline to resist.

The message, that a GOP electorate hungry for victories had learned the lessons of recent cycles, where candidates who won primaries with Tea Party support were rejected by voters in the general election, returning Democrats once labeled “endangered” to office (and keeping the Senate in Democratic hands, despite many early predictions it would flip).

But did the electorate really make that choice? Did the electorate have a choice to make?

While it is hard to ignore the difference in endorsements or the difference in more or less polished rhetoric sported by establishment Republicans and their insurgent challengers, it might be harder to discern much separation at the policy level. It is tempting to call the victors in yesterday’s polls “moderates,” because they are not considered the chosen messengers of the Tea Party, but few of the GOP candidates now heading into November’s general qualify as “middle of the road” by even relatively recent ideological measure.

New candidates for national office (even if honed in state cauldrons) sport the same “small” government, anti-tax, conservative values policy planks as those “not ready for primetime” political players of 2010 and 2012. And even the most entrenched of the Republican establishment (one need look no further than the House and Senate leaders, themselves), have adopted much of the language of their Tea-O-P challengers.

The shift is apparently reflected in the money, too. Early tallies (final numbers in Tuesday’s races have not been released) show lower-than-expected financial involvement from Tea Party allies such as Koch brothers-founded and -funded Americans for Prosperity. Were outside groups feeling more chastened, less obstreperous, or did they simply not see the need to go in where establishment money would suffice?

The lessons of recent cycles will also be top-of-mind in Memphis today at the big Republican National Committee confab. In addition to announcing a newer and supposedly better data-gathering operation designed to close the gap with Democrats (who were seen to win many internet-based campaigning and voter identification battles in the last election), the RNC will seek to impose strict central discipline on the 2016 presidential cycle.

The RNC specifically wants control over the series of televised candidate debates during the 2016 presidential primary season. The Party would like to see the number cut substantially (there were over 20 “official” debates in 2012), but also plans to demand stricter control over the questions. The concern, according to RNC head Reince Priebus, as reported by the AP, was that moderators in past years were too concerned with ferreting out the differences between candidates (over communicating a general rallying cry for the GOP).

Finding differences invites candidates to attack one another, after all, a potentially damaging and possibly pointless exercise if the party elders have already moved politically to appease their right-flank upstarts.

So, did the empire really strike back Tuesday, or (at the risk of inviting the scrutiny of hardcore Star Wars fans) is this more of an ideological Jedi mind trick? Did the empire beat back the rebels, or is it simply now thinking just like them?

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Any views expressed on The Scrutineer are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.