Last Tuesday, US Senate candidate from Delaware, Christine O’Donnell delivered one of the biggest upsets of the year. No sooner did she do this, all hell broke loose. Vicious attacks have been flying at her nonstop.
While we would have expected such attacks from the left and their complicit media buddies, it is very revealing to see the attacks that are coming from the GOP establishment.
Never before have I witnessed such blatant examples of Sore Losers. Her defeated Republican opponent Mike Castle leads the pack. His refusal to endorse O’Donnell was just the first example of bad form. Castle continued to flash his Sore Loser credentials by blaming Sean Hannity and other conservative talk radio hosts. Give me a break! His vote for Cap and Trade probably had more to do with his defeat than anything else.
Right on the heels of Sore Loser Castle is Karl Rove. Has this guy no shame? One of the very reasons why Republicans were shown the door in 2006 and 2008 was because of the very brand of conservatism Rove championed in the Bush administration. So for Rove to carry on the way he did on Hannity over O’Donnell’s victory was just shameless.
Memo to Rove: Your political instincts are yesterday’s news. A new political narrative is being written as we speak. The old playbook no longer applies. The days of stacking the House and Senate with anyone so long as they have a R after their name (quantity vs. quality) is over. The people have spoken (repeatedly).
Finally on the Republican side is Charles Krauthammer. I am quite dismayed by his comments on O’Donnell. Krauthammer is one of the people whose opinion I seek out. However, Krauthammer has been showing an elitist streak that I find less than appealing. I first noticed it with his opinions on Sarah Palin and now with Christine O’Donnell. Does O’Donnell have a steep climb to win in Delaware, yes she does, but to dismiss O’Donnell the way Krauthammer did is just so short sighted.
Regarding O’Donnell herself, I don’t believe she is the strongest candidate the Tea Party could have backed. That being said she has two big things working in her favor. First, she is not the establishment. This is important because the establishment (both on the left and the right) has failed the nation. Ten percent unemployment, sky high record deficits and no respect for the will of the people all add up to the establishment being an undisputed failure. Christine O’Donnell, despite her witchcraft comment, and other past comments, has something the establishment doesn’t have … clean hands. O’Donnell had nothing to do with the unemployment rate, nothing to do with these crazy deficits and nothing to do with the tone deafness in Washington. Add to her favor the fact that she is willing to stand against all of those things and her candidacy no longer looks so kooky.
The other thing working in O’Donnell’s favor is the fact that she is a woman battling against many foes. In American culture there is always something unpleasant about ganging up on a woman. Right now Christine O’Donnell finds herself fending off attacks from both the right and the left. Worse yet, those attacks often seem so over the top. It is almost like she is being held up to a much higher standard. Where was all these criticism about nuttiness when Al Franken ran for the Senate? I think if the left, the media and the GOP establishment continue in their fever pitch to discredit O’Donnell, they will turn her 15 point deficit in the polls to a 15 point lead, because Americans love to root for underdogs.
In the end, I think if O’Donnell takes Palin’s advice and concentrates on communicating to the people of Delaware rather than the national media, she might be able to raise herself in the polls. Senate races are local races. In the end it is only the people of Delaware who will decide her fate and should they elect her, they will be the only people she has to answer to.
Via: Memeorandum
Via: NPR
Via: News Reel Blog
Via: Michelle Malkin
Via: The Right Scoop
Via: Breitbart TV
Via: Fox News
Via: Delaware Tomorrow
Via: Politico
Via: Politico
Via: The Hill
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6 comments:
While Castle has been a sore loser, there's a part of me that doesn't really blame him. O'Donnell's campaign let out an ad attacking Castle implying he was gay. That's a difficult fence to mend.
As far as O'Donnell goes, my complaint against her has always been ethics. She mismanaged her personal finances to the point of losing her house. She failed to pay some staffers from her last campaign, and at least one of them sued her for it. She lied about receiving a degree, and in fact didn't get a degree for a long time because she had failed to pay her student loans.
We'd all be laughing at a Democrat nominee with such personal failings. Why should we accept a Republican with them?
Castle's a RINO, but had he won the seat (and he was 10+ points ahead of Coons), the Republicans would have been one seat closer to majority. And with that majority would come committee chairs and the ability to schedule which bills got voted on. Losing this seat is a huge strategic loss.
Finally, just how conservative do you expect a successful candidate in Delaware to be? How many times do conservatives win statewide elections there? Sometimes, you have to take a strong candidate who will vote your way 50% of the time, rather than running a weak candidate and get a Democrat elected.
Look at California: do you really expect a truly conservative Senator or Governor in that state? But Carly Fiorini, despite being a RINO, is orders of magnitude better than Barbara Boxer. Likewise, Castle would still have been better than Coons.
Well said, and you're right on. Rove is playing a political game that doesn't exist anymore; he doesn't know it yet, that's all. His commentary and advice would have been spot on only a year or so ago (well, okay, closer to two), but this is war, and we're not playing for political percs and ridiculous big government, big spending, big entitlement crap--we're playing for keeps, for the future of our nation. Big stakes, but that's where we are, where we've been forced (and sort of where we complacently drifted, too, at least I did). My money's on America and her people in this one, the pols won't know what hit them until they read about it in a history book in fifty years.
Funny how few of these smart guys actually understand what is going on and that they are not important (and become less so with their ignorance and staunch refusal to wake up and smell the coffee, or tea, I guess). Change is hard, and it's going to hurt a lot of career pols (and the hangers on, pundits, et al), but that's just too bad. They've drifted off course, don't give a damn about America or her people, and need to get out of our government. They either understand what's going on (thus the staunch resistance to and distancing from the Tea Party), or they are deaf, dumb, and blind. Either way, they need to go.
This is why I don't consider myself a REPUBLICAN! They are generally NOT conservative enough for me and are part of the left-wing establishment in D.C. To be a Republican (or a Democrat) is all about worldly party affilleation and not about PRINCIBLE OR MORAL ABSOLUTES! It's just like you said, Christine O'Donnel didn't cause the messes this contry is in today like our national multi-trillion doller debt or our outragiously high tax rates. But the "ellite" (so-called intellectuals) cause this.
Who can really care about her foreclosure? Good God. Her personal finances? Gee-zus. I won't raise the issue of the many, many, in Congress right now whose personal finances are ripe with corruption. But I will raise the issue of how many Americans I know, how many family members I know, who have been or are going through what she's been through. I've gone through Chapter 7 and a foreclosure because a ten-year business failed. Am I, O'Donnell, and others like us bad and immoral? Is any of us unfit for public office now? What should and must matter is what she believes, what she sees as the future for America, and what she will do. If anything, what shortcomings others might make of her past are, to me, a sign that she understands first hand what is happening to America.
Another thing! If O'Donnell were a left-wing democrat like for instance Tim Guitner,who allegately cheated on his taxes,would the extreme left-wing media get all over her case? I don't think so.
People who can't manage their personal finances shouldn't be managing the country's. O'Donnell had a tax lien filed against her; remember when we all howled that Timothy Geithner hadn't paid his taxes? Why is O'Donnell any different?
O'Donnell said she won two counties in her race against Biden in 2008. Then she said she won one county and came close in another. The truth is that she didn't come close in any county, much less win one.
She's a liar and a tax cheat. She'd fit right in with the Democrats, but I hope the Republicans aspire to be better than that.
I'm all for conservative candidates. But give me someone with better ethics than O'Donnell.
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