Tea Party insurgent Christine O’Donnell delivered a knock-out blow tonight to one of President Obama’s favorite congressional Republicans, Delaware Rep. Mike Castle, the guy whose victory in the GOP primary, according to the conventional wisdom, was all-but-certain as recently as a month ago.
Now the peddlers of conventional wisdom will be telling us all the way to election day in November that O’Donnell is doomed against Democrat Chris Coons, is “too conservative” and “too extreme” to win over moderate voters, and the GOP’s hopes of retaking a Senate majority are all but dashed. Blah Blah, Blah Blah.
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There are at least two lessons here.
First, the anger among Republican voters is not limited to the far right reaches of its “base.” Castle was one of the most popular political figures in the state, yet his support in Congress for TARP bailouts, the radical House version of Cap-and-Trade, and the DISCLOSE Act marked him back home among his fellow Republicans as more a representative of the Washington Establishment to Delaware than Delaware’s representative to Washington.
Lesson: The days of “moderate” Republicans in Congress being able to talk the talk of reform in Washington without actually walking it are rapidly coming to an end everywhere except perhaps in the deepest, darkest reaches of the Northeast.
Second, right or wrong, there is no more divisive figure on the Right, for the moment, than O’Donnell. On the issues, she portrays herself as a solid conservative and of course touted her endorsement by Sarah Palin. The problem with O’Donnell is thus not with her ideological orientation, it is strictly because there are serious questions about her financial record and ethical code.
The most troubling of these by far, at least in my judgement, is her 2004 gender discrimination suit against the Inter-Collegiate Studies Institute (ISI). That has a stench of legal opportunism about it that one expects to encounter among political operatives on the Left, not the Right.
Still, I question the conventional wisdom that Delaware is now a lock for the Democrats. Despite Scott Brown, Rand Paul, Sharon Angle, and Joe Miller, the talking heads in Washington and New York obviously still cannot comprehend the depth or intensity of anger among voters or the fact that anger is far from limited to conservatives.
O’Donnell may win in November. And that’s what is scary because, given the implications of the ISI suit and questions about her financial record, an O’Donnell victory in the general election could be the start of embarrassing problems for the Tea Party movement and damaging distractions for Republicans in the new Congress at the worst possible moment.
