Christine O'Donnell's win is the GOP's loss
Eugene Robinson
WashPost
When you ride a tiger, you go wherever the tiger wants to go – even off a cliff.
The Republican Party – viewed less favorably by voters than even the Democrats, according to polls – has been planning to win in November by harnessing the energy and passion of the Tea Party movement. But tonight’s stunning result in Delaware demonstrates that the Tea Party will go wherever it chooses, heedless of Republican strategists’ grand design.
Christine O’Donnell’s victory over Rep. Mike Castle in the Senate primary is a huge political story. How huge? This one race, in one of the nation’s smallest and least populous states, comes pretty close to wiping out the possibility of the Republicans taking control of the Senate in November.
That’s because any reasonable scenario giving the GOP a Senate majority involves capturing the Senate seat that used to belong to Vice President Biden. Castle, a veteran congressman, would have been favored to win – perhaps easily – in the general election. He is Delaware’s kind of Republican: fiscally conservative but moderate on social issues. He’s pro-choice and he favors gun control, in keeping with the attitudes and values of his state.
Enter O’Donnell, a Tea Party “outsider” who was smart enough to push all the right buttons. She is pro-life, she’s hostile to gun control, and she was able to position herself as the anti-establishment candidate. O’Donnell tapped into the mad-as-hell energy that’s swirling around out there. She got an endorsement from the Tea Party’s Evita – Sarah Palin. And despite the best efforts of state and national Republican leaders to stop her, O’Donnell won.
(More here.)
WashPost
When you ride a tiger, you go wherever the tiger wants to go – even off a cliff.
The Republican Party – viewed less favorably by voters than even the Democrats, according to polls – has been planning to win in November by harnessing the energy and passion of the Tea Party movement. But tonight’s stunning result in Delaware demonstrates that the Tea Party will go wherever it chooses, heedless of Republican strategists’ grand design.
Christine O’Donnell’s victory over Rep. Mike Castle in the Senate primary is a huge political story. How huge? This one race, in one of the nation’s smallest and least populous states, comes pretty close to wiping out the possibility of the Republicans taking control of the Senate in November.
That’s because any reasonable scenario giving the GOP a Senate majority involves capturing the Senate seat that used to belong to Vice President Biden. Castle, a veteran congressman, would have been favored to win – perhaps easily – in the general election. He is Delaware’s kind of Republican: fiscally conservative but moderate on social issues. He’s pro-choice and he favors gun control, in keeping with the attitudes and values of his state.
Enter O’Donnell, a Tea Party “outsider” who was smart enough to push all the right buttons. She is pro-life, she’s hostile to gun control, and she was able to position herself as the anti-establishment candidate. O’Donnell tapped into the mad-as-hell energy that’s swirling around out there. She got an endorsement from the Tea Party’s Evita – Sarah Palin. And despite the best efforts of state and national Republican leaders to stop her, O’Donnell won.
(More here.)
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