I know this distinction will get lost in the mass media joy at the ‘grass roots’ victory of the Tea Party candidate in Delaware, but national media focus on Big Themes, and I think there’s an important difference between the national Republican Party and the 50 different state organizations.
When national media are dissing “the establishment” in Delaware, they’re talking not just about the national Republican Party, but about state Party delegates, who are not “Party bosses” but instead are long-term GOP activists and loyal partisans who attend State conventions, show up to volunteer locally year after year, and know their state’s electorate and issues really well.
Those people supported Castle.
While Castle also had the support of the national GOP, grouping the individual activists who make up state delegations and the national Republican Party together and calling them “the establishment” while depicting the Tea Party as “grass roots” is not accurate. State Party activists are as grass as it gets.
Republicans are going to have problems if national Tea Party groups continue to helicopter in and insist they are the “activist base” and long-term State party activists are not needed or wanted.
Want to know how angry the state’s Republican leaders are at the campaign of Christine O’Donnell, the perennial candidate who is threatening Rep. Mike Castle in the U.S. Senate race? Here’s what Delaware Republican Party chairman Tom Ross told me last night:
I could buy a parrot and train it to say, ‘tax cuts,’ but at the end of the day, it’s still a parrot, not a conservative.
That, so far, is my favorite line of this election season.
Ross is furious because O’Donnell had no credibility as a candidate until the Tea Party Express, a California-based group, decided to target Castle, a genuine moderate who represents the last vestiges of what was once a thriving and honorable wing of Republicanism. Oh yes, and she also got the endorsements of Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). DeMint is determined to purge his party of anyone with the nerve to be – well, even a moderate conservative.
Ross notes that the state Republican convention endorsed Castle. These are not some shadowy party bosses, but, as he put it, “the grass-roots delegates who knock on the doors and pass out the literature and pound the pavements.”
Ross says he thinks it’s pretty nervy for “some group in Sacramento that doesn’t know our state to come here, destroy our civility, and tell the people of Delaware they know more about our state than we know.”
Mudge
Enough people in Delaware believed what Sacramento told them to choose O’Donnell. We are seeing the complete victory of ideology over pragmatism in the Republican party. We’ll see if the 47% who voted for Castle drink the Kool-Aid between now and November.
Marc
Yes, but the Republicans in Delaware are the wrong kind of Republicans – you know, not Dixie-style extremists. So driving them away is part of The Plan.
gypsy howell
I’m reposting this from the last thread:
I gotta tell ya, I think O’Donnell’s got a shot in DE. It’s a very small state, she can go door to door and spread whatever lies she wants about Coons and no one will even know, and she’s going to have big, big money behind her. She’s like Sarah Palin if Sarah Palin could speak in complete sentences.
The Democratic Party is going to sit back and laugh all through the campaign season, and then wake up on Nov 3 with a Scott Brown scenario on their hands. Except Scott Brown is going to look like a far left Rhodes Scholar compared to O’Donnell.
***
We are now in the age of Citizens United. Whatever electoral force the “real grassroots” had is going to be completely overwhelmed by the tsunami of cash and resources unleashed by the oligarchy behind the Tea Party. Welcome to our new reality. The Tom Rosses are way behind the curve here.
Scary times.
BTW, I love how our propaganda overlords in the media are turning the ship around before our very eyes. This morning they’re beginning the rehabilitation of O’Donnell, who just yesterday they passed off as a crackpot. Watching Morning Joe today is an eyewitness look at the propaganda process in action. Orwellian.
Keith G
Some good points Kay. Well thought out.
I’m glad I am not the only one who screws up block quotes. FYWP.
Maude
It will be interesting for “I don’t touch myself” O’Donnell in the campaign up to November. The novelty will wear off and what will the Republicans do with this?
I also want to see how NJ votes in November. Christie is off to less than a shiny beginning.
Emma
Cry me a river. The Republican grass-roots have spent a great of time demonizing Democrats of all stripes. It never occurred to them that demonization can work in either direction, and while Democrats wouldn’t do it, their own crazy would.
In the words of the old cliche, sow the wind, reap the Teabaggers.
SBJules
The Tea Party is a California group?
Bob L
@gypsy howell: worth keeping in mind with Castle Delaware was almost a sure thing for the GOP. While in teatard land Castle maybe a DFH in the real world he’s another conservative hardliner.
Mudge
I am becoming more and more intrigued by the role Fox News plays in all of this. Underneath it all, Fox is the waterboy for corporate America, but they provide a very effective populist laundering of the message to arouse the incurious and non-analytical masses. I wonder if there is some sort of insidious manifesto driving their actions. If there is, I am uncertain the national Republican Party has signed it, they may just be puppets, controlled by the rich and dragged along by the Tea Party. The degree to which Tea Party goals are counter to their best interests continues to amaze me. But, then again, the base is incurious and non-analytical. Fox would seem to be a very important, and perhaps not independent, partner in the manipulation of those masses.
kay
@Keith G:
Thanks. I thought I was doing block quotes correctly, but what the hell do I know.
I saw the same thing in the national coverage of the Hillary v Obama battle, where it was all fresh-faced grass roots versus smoke filled rooms. It simply isn’t accurate, at the State Party level.
gypsy howell
@Bob L:
Right. Castle, a conservative hardliner, was supposed to crush the Democrat in the general. Which is why all the premature celebrating about a sure-thing Dem win in DE over O’Donnell is ridiculous. She could very well be the next Senator from DE, and our government will be that much more under the control of complete lunatics.
Guster
So the 82-year-old Japanese soldier still fighting WWII on a remote Pacific island lost the battle? Weird.
gypsy howell
@Mudge:
Gee, ya think?
Guster
@gypsy howell: She’s gotta win not just all of Castle’s primary supporters, but a hefty percentage of Dems, to win, doesn’t she?
What’s the breakout on party ID?
frustrated mama (formerly demo woman)
@gypsy howell: There are very few moderate Republicans left. I wonder what Olympia and Susan think about their new party candidates.
WereBear
I’ve heard a lot of “OMG, we have to get off our duff and make sure this lunatic doesn’t get elected” from my fellow Dems. So while we may have an enthusiasm gap, the horrified gap might make up for it.
If this was what the people truly wanted, they wouldn’t have skulked away and called themselves “independents” since 2008.
I don’t think The Crazy sells as well among the Non Crazy out there. Don’t forget, W won, but he ran as a false flag candidate; he lied about every one of his plans and ambitions.
The Tea Party is loud and proud.
gypsy howell
@Guster:
Don’t know, but given that Castle was apparently poised to take a big chunk of Dems in the general, I wouldn’t be too sanguine about O’Donnell not being able to do the same. The republican vote is a given, I think. The republicans have 2 months to polish that turd, and there’s no reason they won’t do it once the party regulars get over themselves today.
shaun
I am a registered Delaware Democrat and thus could not vote in yesterday’s primary.
I also thought Castle would squeak by and that if O’Donnell somehow won, she would get demolished in the general election given that the state has trended Democratic in recent statewide elections and is notoriously ticket splitty. (Voters once elected a Democratic governor and Republican lieutenant governor.)
But with the clarity that a good night’s sleep and a Phillies win brings, I am not so sure that the Democratic nominee will prevail. As Dubya might say, I continue to misunderestimate the raw anger out there.
lol
I bet money Castle endorses Coons if it looks like it’ll be even remotely close.
gypsy howell
@WereBear:
The Tea Party candidates might be complete fucking lunatics, but the money behind them isn’t. I imagine some image consultants will swoop in now to make sure she doesn’t let her freak flag fly too much. And then there’s the power of advertising dollars, and lying comes as naturally to them as breathing.
gypsy howell
@lol:
I bet Castle just SsTFU and doesn’t do anything.
Guster
@shaun: Without Castle’s endorsement? How many registered Dems (forget about Castle primary voters) need to vote for O’Donnell for her to win?
El Cid
That’s the thing about grassroots groups completely launched by, organized by, and funded by ultra-right wing billionaires: they truly represent the people, and the billion dollar media will be happy to keep reminding us of that.
El Cid
Another thing these primaries demonstrated is that Americans are sick and tired of all the partisanship and the negative campaigning.
Guster
@El Cid: Ha! And now we know for sure that negative campaigning simply doesn’t work in Delaware. Maybe in other states. But not Delaware. Never Delaware.
mai naem
I saw a bumpersticker yesterday which said ” I think therefore I vote Republican”
SpotWeld
There has been a building narrative about the “unmotiavated left”, that seems to paint the liberal side of the electorate as dissatisifed with Obama and Democratic politicians in general. This has been sited as evidence of low Dem turn out in the upcoming elections and a “huge GOP turnover” in the house and senate.
These recent Tea Party primary wins seem to point to a serious motivation problem on the *right*. The Tea Party for all the noise and spectacle they generate… are they really that big of a group. All information I’ve seen seems to size them as a fairly small group compared to the core Republican Party organizers and their usual groups of volunteers.
If the Tea Party can come in and take elections like this from the moderate Republicans… does this point to a highly demotivated GOP base with the motivated fringe flocking to the Tea Party?
SpotWeld
@El Cid:
I really hope that’s true as it means that the media flood that McMahon is running here in CT will work against her.
El Cid
@SpotWeld: Read the link.
General Stuck
The Lemon Tree Very Pretty
No shit sherlock!
And Mike Murphy haz a sad
But Vin Weber sees some punch in the turdbowl
We are all Dean Wormer today.
Smurfhole
@gypsy howell:
Castle’s no “conservative hardliner.” Castle’s been a moderate fixture in Delaware for my entire lifetime. He enjoyed widespread support among blue-collar and fiscally conservative Democrats. He was pro-abortion, and the rumors about his personal life were sufficient to lead some voters to suppose that he might not be averse to gay rights.
Getting the right percentage of slower-lower Delaware Dixiecrat reactionaries to vote for the TeaBag candidate is not going to cut it in November, when the full force of the liberal machine that is northern Delaware comes into effect.
I’m curious to see what percentage of the total Delaware electorate voted for O’Donnell. Given the low turnout of a primary that was supposed to be a sure thing for Castle, and given that the Democrats enjoy a huge lead in Delaware voter registration and in turn-out-the-vote drives in the main populated area of Wilmington, and given the anger and revulsion the state GOP apparatus feels at this incursion by out-of-state money (read, in Delaware terms, “fucking asshole invaders who should die in pools of fire and blood”), I’d be pretty surprised if O’Donnell expands her base much beyond the same primary voters who helped her take Castle down in a squeaker.
Punchy
Sorry if I’m stupid, by why does everyone think that O’Donnell cant win in Delaware? Obtuse Angle tied with Harry, Feingold tied/losing, Bloomenthal barely beating McMahon……shit’s completely fucked up everywhere. why does all the pundits think the Dem is a shoe-in?
jibeaux
I’m not seeing the distinction here.
R. Porrofatto
We really need some new terminology, because these aren’t Tea Party candidates. There is no such entity as the Tea Party. These are Limbaugh-Hannity-Beck-Fox Right-Wing Looney Tunes Koch-Funded Dick Armey Douchbag Party candidates, but I’m afraid that won’t fit in a headline.
Seriously. Tea Party also sounds so ridiculously harmless, and these people are anything but. Like calling Karl Rove a “Bushie.”
Republican fringe.
Radical right-wing.
Right-wing extremist.
Paleo-Palinites
Something.
El Cid
You know, it would be kind of fun to have a ‘grassroots’ anti-establishment Democrat faction that is concentrated on inchoate screams in public. I’m talking the kinds of primitivism which would make the harshest critics of ANSWER and FDL say, you know, those other guys were pretty moderate by comparison.
We need to go all out, declaring that sentences are elitist, that them damn fancy pants conservatives can’t make us understand that the stuff in photos aren’t real but just pictures, that stoves work by evil magic and only a good beating can drive out the spirits, and so forth.
And after a while of shitting ourselves in public and rolling around sidewalks and town meetings screaming about attacking clouds and how it’s time to take back the government from all the squirrels, would we get a lot of press coverage as a bunch of grassroots heroes?
El Cid
@R. Porrofatto: It’s just that when you say “Koch Party” out loud, it sounds like something very Miami of the 1980s.
Scott
I have a friend — well, a former friend, since he’s embraced the crazy more than I ever thought he would — in another forum who announced last night that he’s overjoyed that the GOP is finally purging itself of its moderates.
I really had to bite my tongue to keep from reminding him that the party’s base is a damn skimpy 27%, and you need to appeal to moderates to win elections.
November will be rough, ’cause the GOP will declare themselves Ultimate Victors of Ultimate Victory, but after that, it’s gonna be “All aboard the Palin Fail Wagon”…
jibeaux
@Punchy:
It’s the polling as it stands right now. From 538:
Castle had 95% approval ratings and had won 12 elections. He would have been, at a minimum, a much, much stronger candidate in the general.
Tyro
Ross notes that the state Republican convention endorsed Castle.
Contrast this with the rumblings since 2002 among more liberal democrats in MA against an entrenched machine establishment: it took several years, but what happened is that the democratic activists took over the party at the delegate level and endorsed Deval Patrick first: THEN they got him nominated at the voting booth in the primary. How grass roots can you be if you’re not able to band together at the town level and take over the local apparatus?
Kryptik
@SpotWeld:
You’ve made the mistake that the Tea Party is, or has ever been, a genuine division or schism in the right wing. The Tea Party is the GOP base tressed up in populism and rage froth, with an extra dash of ‘other’ hate.
@El Cid:
No, for one good reason: It’d be a leftist movement.
Everyone, especially the news, knows that leftists are never serious and should never be treated as such. However, right wing nutters are just genuine fucking America. Have you learned nothing?
@Scott:
The problem here is that even the Independents seem to have fallen headlong into ‘Obama is soshulist and Dems hate everyone!’ froth, mostly because most avowed Independents these days seem to be just Republican shamed into Independent affiliation by the latest loss. For all intents and purposes, they’re still wingers.
Then again, this is just the ugly cynic in me talking.
El Cid
@Kryptik: Yeah, but I think it would still be fun to try.
kay
@Punchy:
I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I do think her election absolutely gives the Democrat a better shot.
Keith G
I *do* think that it is cool that in some races in Nov. the public will be given stark choices, as the traditional pool of candidates can appear rather similar.
I also welcome the fact that one or two Teabaggers will actually get into the Senate. Let’s see how they function in the almost real world of legislative process.
Interesting times.
Kryptik
@Keith G:
What, Michelle Bachmann wasn’t demonstration enough?
Glen Tomkins
Only the voters are the grassroots
The analysis here pits only two groups, state party regulars vs national tea party organizers, against each other as contenders for the title of genuine DE grassroots. Actually, the only DE Republican grassroots is the DE Republican electorate. That grassroots decided to go with the choice of the tea party organizers, not the state party regulars.
Sure, the state party people are indeed not some set of out-of-touch bosses sitting in some back room making deals. Well, maybe in IL, but, sure, not in DE. In DE, as in most states, the party people are the schlepps who knock doors year-in, year-out, for whoever the party nominates.
But that perspective, being for whoever wins the R label against whoever wins the D label, gives the regulars this significant difference from the party grassroots in intraparty contests. The regulars have a strong bias for whichever R they think likely to win in November, however much or little they may sympathize with whatever wing of the party that person belongs to. In this case, Castle had every prospect of doing much better than O’Donnell against Coons, so of course the regulars had an almost insurmountably strong bias for Castle. That says nothing at all about the ideological leanings of even the regulars, much less the broader DE Republican grassroots.
srv
Will this be the Crack-Pot meet Tea-Kettle election?
numbskull
@gypsy howell: Completely correct.
It’s fun to poke fun at Teh Crazy. But, I’m old enough to remember when it was unthinkable that a shallow, war-dodging, B-actor with little grasp of politics and even less understanding of issues could win the governorship of a major state.
Gypsy is completely correct. With enough money, anything is possible in politics. It is the history of our country. Reagan had GE (or was I talking about Ahnold and the power companies?), the tea baggers have the Kochs (and lots of others who have yet to grace the pages of The New Yorker). And Delaware is the perfect venue for this type of crap.
I’m sure you’re tired of hearing it, but try to speak to just ONE person today about voting, maybe even voting for a Democrat.
BenA
@Keith G:
The stupid thing is they don’t have to function in the Senate. They’ll do the exact same thing a “moderate” Republican would. Vote the party line 99.5% of the time. I suppose since it is Delaware Castle would have been able to pull a Snow type move and occasionally be allowed to water down Dem legislation to show that he’s really independant…. but now the DeMint’s off the world don’t even have to worry about that.
The other thing people who think that O’Donnell has a chance in Nov are misunderstanding is that this is Delware, not Kentucky. It’s much less conservative….
And before you point to Massachusetts…. O’Donnell ISN’T Scott Brown. Brown was a “moderate” pretending to be a Tea Bagger. O’Donnell is a true believer.
jibeaux
Now that I’ve taken the time to dispense snark and cut-and-pastes, let me just say, thanks, Kay. I think this is, as usual, a very thoughtful analysis and quite accurate as to the portrayal of party activists/loyalists as the grass roots.
Needless to say, I am completely delighted at the Round-Up that has been sprayed on them.
lol
@Punchy:
You’re missing the upward trend:
Everyone had already written Reid’s political obituary prior to Angle getting the nomination. Now he’s a very slight favorite to win.
Rand has made what should have been a gimme hold (It’s KENTUCKY FGS!) and turned it in a time and money sink for the national Republicans. This will have benefits for other races even if Conway loses and there’s a slight chance he can still win.
Blumenthal has been decently to extremely ahead of McMahon in every public poll. He can’t take it for granted, but if he works, he’ll win.
Feingold represents a purple state with an indie streak.
I think August represents the high point of Republican polling. I think Dems are going to start crawling back. They’ll still lose dozens of seats in the House but I think they can hold onto the majority.
Odie Hugh Manatee
While I am glad to see what I view as the weaker candidate winning in Delaware I do recognize that the crazy is in the air and I would not bet on an easy win for Coons. Crazy has a way of catching and for some reason it seems that a good portion of the American public is susceptible to infection. I am sure that the Repub party is trying to figure out how to harness this beast that they have unleashed seeing that right now it is doing more damage to them than it is to the Democrats. While I hope that the party loyalists shun O’Diddily I also think that this could backfire and instead help her rally support to ‘fight the machine’.
I listened to her word salad ‘speech’ last night and I actually started to miss hearing the inane ramblings of $arah Paylin. Either way, win or lose, this lady is a massive trainwreck for the GOP. She is going to encourage crazies in other states to fight their local party and if successful then that means the ‘old order’ is out. There will be no more need for a candidate to work their way up from the inside, instead it’ll all be one big popularity contest.
Just what we all need, American Idol politics. Combine this with the Citizens United decision and I smell disaster on the horizon if this crazy shit catches on.
jwb
@gypsy howell: If Coons is a poor candidate, well, then yes this is a possibility. On the other hand, the Dems have the experience of Brown, so I’ll be very, very surprised if they are caught flat footed by O’Donnell. Then, too, Brown never came close to playing the complete crazy card the way O’Donnell has.
There’s another intangible at work here, which is this: these victories by the teabaggers have had the paradoxical effect of raising the morale of the Democratic activists. Not that the left blogosphere is at all identical with the activists, but it does offer some measure, and the left blogosphere seems absolutely giddy after last night—and it seems the kind of giddiness that leads to increased campaign donations and volunteer hours for GOTV. Definitely good news for Republicans!
Kryptik
@lol:
I honest to god hope so. Because I’m still seeing way too much meh from the folks at the top of our party, way too much ceding of the narrative and momentum to the GOP and especially the Tea Party. Pelosi seems like the only one who’s been really consistent in fighting and pushing back, and even she has the great dissatisfaction of knowing that her great albatross, Steny Hoyer, will follow any statement she makes within hours to completely undermine it.
D. Mason
I wonder what kind of effect this demoralizing defeat will have on the real Republican structure in Delaware for years to come.
SBJules
@El Cid:
Cue the Miami Vice theme for the Koch party :)
kay
@Glen Tomkins:
I think that’s true, except you’re missing that the state party regulars are objecting not to up-start grass roots insurgents but to what they consider out of state actors hijacking a state primary.
I think that’s happened with Hoffman in New York. Local voters said “who the hell is this guy and where did he come from?” They liked the local woman that they knew and trusted, and when she was discarded, they went for the Democrat.
If I were the Democrat in Delaware, I’d make sure and mention the idea for this candidacy came out of Palin HQ in Virginia and the Tea Party Express in California.
p.a.
@Mudge:
These Christianist/bigot revivals occur every generation or so. In the past they have burned out because of their own stupidity and corruption, usually after doing damage at the local, sometimes the state level (see the Klan in Indiana in the 1920’s). Not to minimize this; it was not pleasant for those on the way of the steamroller at the time, but sanity returned and the kooks went back underground into their loony churches for a while, abandoning politics.
But with Fox ‘News’ and the web, the viral is, well, viral. And I would use Occam’s Razor and say Fox is in it for one reason and one reason only: ratings. Just saw the graph a few days ago- cable news viewership is stagnant or dropping except for Fox. And its growth is completely due to the migration of Republo/Conservatives there. Nothing better than seeing one’s crackpot world view confirmed on the tee vee 24/7.
Keith G
@Kryptik: Apparently not.
Maybe its a critical mass thing – there is always a singular weirdo, see Cynthia Ann McKinney.
The Senate, though, is a different matter. It’s not that easy to be a anti-institutionalist in that chamber.
Comrade Javamanphil
From the GOS front page:
That’s a pretty big hill she has to climb and she can’t touch herself while doing it.
D'Angelo
Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald is defending the Tea Party on Twitter. I really don’t need to say anything more.
Anya
I hope Coons learns from Martha Coakley’s disastrous campaign and fights like hell. We cannot afford to be complacent about the midterm election.
The country is going through some wierd transformation and we cannot take anything for granted. Lord knows the MSM will advance any idiotic meme the wingers start. And the story of the Delaware primary might be “Mama Grizzlies taking back America.” Just listening to the talking heads this morning made me ill.
jwb
@gypsy howell: The image folks won’t be able to do much good between now and November. They can staunch the bleeding, so if they were already in a favorable positions, such as Rand Paul, they can keep them from leaking too badly. But they won’t be able to elevate her numbers without money, time and a candidate who will listen to what they say. They have the money, of course, but neither of the other attributes they need to work their magic. Assuming Coons is remotely competent, the Dems shouldn’t have trouble here.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Punchy: Each of those races has its own distinch problems. Nevada’s economy is in the shitter(see Ground Zero of the housing mess). McMahon is spending $50 million, which is a ton even in CT. I don’t know why Feingold is losing except he’s always had close races(and who knows how much is being spent on his opponent).
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@D’Angelo: I don’t think he’s defending them in the manner you think he is.
geg6
This really is some funny shit (even if these people scare the living crap out of me):
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/15/odonnell_wins_bad_blood_simmers_in_de_gop_107162.html
The Republic of Stupidity
Sooooooo…
It appears that money does indeed equal free speech after all.
Who knew?
And seeing as billionaires and corporations have so much more f-in’ money than the rest of us, I guess they do deserve to have so much more say, huh?
jwb
@Keith G: I’d prefer the teabaggers end up in the House, personally, because there they can be entertaining without doing real damage. Even individual Senators have a lot of power to fuck up the works (look at what a nutcase like Coburn can do) and if you add one or two more to the mix that will just make things that much worse. On the other hand, perhaps that would be the incentive needed to get the Senate to fix its rules.
mr. whipple
Wow, I’m getting vote for Christine google ads on both sides of this page.
Barbara
Of course anything can happen, but the primary was a closed primary limited to registered Republicans. What percentage, even, of Castle voters will transfer their support to O’Donnell? Delaware isn’t Kentucky, it isn’t even Nevada. It has never been as solidly blue as Maryland, it’s kind of like a combination of Connecticut and Virginia, except that the percentage of solid Blue to solid Red tips way more to the former than the latter — the infusion of Dixie covers a lot less territory than it does in Virginia and the infusion of country club Republicans is less than in Connecticut.
frustrated mama (formerly demo woman)
The democratic party is going to introduce some numbers from the census today according to Huffington Post. The top ten percent share of total income jumped 15% since the last census. link
Somehow I don’t think that Christine O’Donnell’s voters fall into that category.
jwb
@numbskull: “With enough money, anything is possible in politics.” Actually, not. You also need time and a willingness to remake yourself, both of which Reagan had and O’Donnell doesn’t appear to. I’d be more concerned if this primary had happened during the summer. The only negative I see at the moment is that Coons only polls at 44 percent against her, which suggests that her negatives are not so high as to make her completely unelectable. But she is starting from a sizable gap, even presuming that she’ll immediately jump 10 percent in the polling due to the attention given the race.
someguy
Hah ha ha ha ha.
That’s like a “thriving and honorable wing of p@derasty.”
Kay, you gotta stop dropping jokes like that into your posts. I spewed coffee on my keyboard.
Kryptik
@The Republic of Stupidity:
Hey, everyone has an equal voice. Some are just more equal than others.
jwb
@D’Angelo: Greenwald is just envious.
BR
@mr. whipple:
well…click on them.
Ryan
It’s been a big month for O’Donnell. First she gets her college degree on Sept. 1st and now she’s the nominee!
I wonder how she’ll celebrate.
Kryptik
@jwb:
All I have to say is that the Teatardation has forced me to reevaluate just how quickly and how virulently crazy can truly spread in a short amount of time. I’d love for this to be a sure win, but you just know the media is going to carry water for her from here to election day, just to promote the ‘Dems lost and ineffective’ narrative. And entirely too many elected Dems willing to play out this exact role.
Blue Neponset
@WereBear: I think you have found the fatal flaw of the Tea Baggers. The surest way for a Republican to lose is to actually tell the truth.
It took Rand Paul and Sharron Angle a couple of days to figure this out. I don’ t think this crazy DE chick is smart enough to shut up about her dumb ass beliefs.
General Stuck
Scenes from the wingnut civil war front;
Rove gets Malkinized
Dear gawd, Rove pounded her rectitude.
geg6
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
I gotta say, if anyone on the leftish end of the political spectrum has done more damage to enthusiasm and his own supposedly preferred policies than Glenn Greenwald, I don’t know who has. People were here last night bitching and moaning about Kos and how he hasn’t been yelling loud enough about GOTV efforts for their preferences, but that is actually not true. If you don’t pay attention to the idiots who post diaries or who comment there (which I don’t), Kos has had numerous posts over the last couple of weeks urging people to get off their asses and start working the grass roots.
This post right here has put me into the Greenwald is a troll in the worst sense of the word, with his “both sides are just as bad” bullshit:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/09/13/democrats/index.html
Fuck him. I’ve decided that whatever Greenwald advocates for in campaign strategies and such is what I’ll be working hard to make sure the exact opposite is what actually occurs. He is not on my side at all, even if he has some points in the very narrow area of detention policy, state secrets, and the homeland security front.
danimal
There are a lot of Republican moderates who have turned the other way at the excesses of the fringe. They have paid lip service when necessary and then conducted their business in the real world while the fringe waited outside the room. Yes, the Tea Party members are Republican, but they are Republicans who consider themselves disenfranchised. The Republicans who didn’t like George Bush pushing for immigration reform or Medicare Part D. They’ve had a decade or two of indoctrination from Rush Limbaugh and they want to take the country in revolutionary direction.
So now the fringe of the GOP is taking over the party, and the moderates are threatened. After a cycle or two, GOP moderates will either become Dem moderates OR they will coalesce and fight to regain control of their party. Pass the popcorn; the fun has only just begun.
Kryptik
@General Stuck:
That’s still illegal in Texas, isn’t it?
mcd410x
QOTD: Does the tea party movement become defined by Christine O’Donnell the way the anti-Iraq movement became defined by Cindy Sheehan?
Martin
Heh. Fuck you Ross. We get every douchebag in the nation showing up in California come voter initiative time. Prop 8 – run out of Utah. Prop 23 this year – run out of Texas. Half the initiatives we have come from other states.
You shits don’t want others fucking with your politics, than get behind real campaign finance reform and it’ll get better. Instead you dickheads cheered the Citizens United Not Timid (C.U.N.T.) victory. I hope Alaska and South Carolina wingnuts run the GOP there for the next century.
kay
@someguy:
I agree with you. I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for the much-missed Republican Party of yore, although I know a lot of other people do. They’ve been complete assholes for my adult lifetime, and every election cycle I hear “they used to be moderates!”
When was that? Pre-Reagan?
Looks like a straight line to full-crazy to me. I could plot it on a graph, and it’s decades.
AB
re: parrot
Actually, yeah, that’s a conservative.
mcd410x
@geg6: Hate it when someone’s fee-fees get hurt.
Dan
The republicans have for the last forty years or so had this problem of trying to cater to big business and the religious right all at once. They tended to deliver to the former and pay lip service to the latter and it was likely to become a major problem for the party. Then the tea party went and solved their problem for them by inventing a new religion and a misreading of american history that fuses big business and fundamentalist christianity into one movement.
jwb
@Kryptik: I just sincerely believe there is not sufficient time for them to do so, especially in Delaware, which is off the beaten media trail. They’d really have to distort their media machine, I think, to make an effective intervention in Delaware, and that would come at the cost of supporting more likely candidates elsewhere. As I said, I’d be far more concerned if this was the middle of the summer; as it stands, it’s going to take the consultants two weeks just to get themselves oriented in Delaware and that will leave them with a month to shape a message and get it out. If O’Donnell didn’t already have all these negatives (Scott Brown was much different in this respect), it would be a different story. My belief also depends, of course, on Coons being an effective candidate. As I know nothing about him, I can’t say this is anything like a sure thing.
jibeaux
Holy cow, there really are ads for her on this site. Along with, for me, the ceaseless “Vote Lawson for Congress LESS taxes SMALLER government MORE freedom”. I don’t live in Lawson’s district, and see also too: parrot.
bago
I’m sorry, I just can’t trust a 41 year old whose principles seem To imply that they have never had an orgasm. People that repressed are dangerous.
jwb
@geg6: He’s right to be concerned about civil liberties, and he’s an effective advocate for the cause; I think it’s a good thing that he keeps harping on the issue. But otherwise he’s pretty crappy, too much my way or the highway, and he has no political sense whatsoever: if we followed his highway we’d find ourselves plunging into the political abyss.
Marc
@mcd410x:
I could go the rest of my life without seeing that phrase. It lowers my opinion of anyone who uses it at this point – along with “hippie-punching” (e.g. how dare you disagree with me) and “thrown under the bus” (see above).
Tattoosydney
@General Stuck:
Eeuw. Now I have got malkin all over me.
I did like that Castle is apparently a “Soros Republican”. Purge the unbelievers, Michelle. Please.
Face
@bago: I can see her being the 51st vote in the new GOP-majority Senate, kept at bay away from her desk and unable to vote by some Reid aide holding up a Penthouse magazine in front of her at the Senate chamber door, like wingtard Kryptonite.
geg6
@mcd410x:
If you’re talking about my fee fees, no need to worry. Greenwald is an idiot about anything than other than those narrow areas in which he has something intelligent to say and I’ve know that for a long time. I just can’t understand any other idiots who care one whit about the direction of this country who would even spend one second defending him.
Like you, perhaps.
And just so you know, you can’t hurt my fee fees, either.
Glen Tomkins
@kay: As a talking point, maybe
Sure, it’s always useful to paint the other side as bizarre, extreme, out of the mainstream, un-American, (well, un-Delawarian, in this case) etc., and thereby disqualified from holding public office even before we start talking policy differences. And sure, the label, “rejected even by R regulars” is one badge of extremism. In this case, that message has this particular utility of giving voters in DE who usually go R some cover for voting against the R candidate this year. O’Donnell isn’t a real, Delaware R, she’s a crazy, national party R.
But I question how useful that would be. In DE, you don’t need any Rs voting for the D candidate for the Ds to win. It’s not Montana. You just need the Ds plus a goodly chunk of the I vote. The I vote is what you target in DE. And you probably do better at getting people, like true swing voters, who don’t have any mental hurdle to get over to vote either way, by painting the whole Republican party as bizarre, extreme, etc. You would want to avoid implying that the local Rs are more moderate than the national Rs, because you want to get the swing voters in DE to become permanent D voters.
The messaging to swing voters over this O’Donnell victory would run the other way than what you’re suggesting. You emphasize that the R party regulars wanted Castle because they are politically savvy and devious. He is a stealth R, a seemingly moderate R, and only a stealth R can win in a sensible, mainstream state like DE. The actual Republican grassroots, even in DE, is so beyond the pale extreme, that no sensible centrist would vote for anyone but a D. “The Republican grassroots has spoken. O’Donnell crazy is what they have to say to you, the sensible voter, and you need to give that the appropriate response — total rejection. “
bago
@srv: This is the tea party. There’s not enough black to make a kettle-pot comparison.
Redshift
@kay:
Yes, seriously. I still disagreed with most of them then, but at least they talked rationally about why they had the views I disagreed with, and they could write op-eds that weren’t filled with obvious lies and ludicrous assumptions. (There were conservative Democrats I vehemently disagreed with then, too.)
It may have started earlier in many states, but at the national level, Reagan’s election was when the crazy started taking over.
Balboa
Ross says he thinks it’s pretty nervy for “some group in Sacramento that doesn’t know our state to come here, destroy our civility, and tell the people of Delaware they know more about our state than we know.”
Looks like the Tee Pees paid attention to how the Catholics, Mormons and evangelical churches ran their anti Prop 8 campaign.
Zifnab
@Martin:
Honestly, the way Alaska is headed, they’ll be bright blue in an election cycle or two. Murkowski could run independent and split the Republican vote. And Don Young gets a big fight every other election cycle.
This year could be a real let down for the Republicans if they start hemorrhaging easy wins. DeMint’s little insurgency could easily trash his party.
Ash Can
@kay #85:
In my own lifetime at least, yes. For example, moderate Republicans were instrumental in persuading Richard Nixon to wrap up America’s little Indochinese adventure in 1973, and in persuading him that his best course of action was to resign in the face of the Watergate investigations the year after that. If federal-level Republicans then were like the “my party right or wrong” lemmings of today, Watergate would never have made it past Page 12 of the WaPo and we’d still be mopping up the mess in Vietnam. And I agree that since then, it’s been a straight line to full-crazy, just as you say.
numbskull
@jwb: I think you’re wrong.
Well, not wrong, but just not keepin’ up with the times.
I completely agree that Reagan had time to craft his image and that he needed that time. …50 years ago.
Today we have the 24/7 “newshour”. As others reported up-thread, GOP pundits/Fox talkingheads/”conservatives” who right up to yesterday afternoon were deriding her are now reforming her. Today she is a joke, even on Fox. Tomorrow, her “policy positions” will be discussed on Fox as “hey, ya know, some of this isn’t completely insane…” And I don’t mean “tomorrow” rhetorically. Literally by tomorrow. By next week, the exact same thing will happen in the “regular” media outlets. By next month she will be on the Sunday talk shows.
I hope I am wrong. If I am, please, please rub my nose in it. I promise to breathe deeply.
Violet
@bago:
Was thinking much the same thing. It can’t possibly be true. So what’s she hiding?
It seems like people who are screeching about such idiocy are the ones with the biggest secrets. What’s she hiding? Did she star in p0rn videos? Got an S&M habit? Pimps herself out on weekends for extra cash? What’s she hiding?
Hal
BTW, did anyone notice during Christine O’Donnell’s victory speech, they waived some black guy who was slightly off camera into the picture? It was fun to watch them maneuver him into frame, and make this shorter white woman move over.
No doubt he was just one of many black people there. Big tent!
Paul L.
I do not believe that Ross said that
That is progressive hack E.J. Dionne putting words in his mouth.
You hypocrites keep forgetting your treatment of Joe Lieberman.
someguy
@Redshift:
Oh bullshit. They were raving paranoid anti-communists before Reagan, and before that they nazi sympathizers and isolationists until Pearl Harbor forced their hand. Before that their batshit economic policy drove the country into the Great Depression. Before that they were the party of corruption, and they haven’t had a shred of decency since the Civil War, a conflict that was basically thrust upon them, so I don’t think you can even give them credit for making a conscious choice to be on the right side then.
bemused
@Violet:
Methinks she doth protest too much. She probably has a secret stash of titillating tools in her bedside table drawer.
Comrade Javamanphil
@bemused: I bet she has a hell of a porn collection.
Violet
@bemused:
I would bet she’s got worse secrets than just some tools in her bedside drawer. Anyone who tries to convince others not to touch themselves is seriously repressed. And there’s no way she could get to the age of 41 without that sort of weird repression seeping out, probably in some interesting ways. A collection of tools is way too basic for that kind of repression.
srv
I posted that link on reddit and somebody there had a great idea: democratic campaign ads using parrots in place of their opponents.
bemused
@Violet:
Yup, I agree it’s likely that she has shown some kind of unusual behaviors for such a “purist” that are known or observed by others. Now that she is nationally known, anything odd will surface sooner or later.
kay
@Glen Tomkins:
I think where you and I differ is you believe the Tea Party is a legit grass roots movement, and somehow more legit that the Party activists at the state level.
I don’t believe that. I think the Tea Party has been sold and promoted on national media, so is in a very real sense “top down”.
I don’t know how you call a “movement” that started with a CNBC talking head “grass roots”. It’s a cable tv movement, and millionaires started it, and fund it.
Do Tea Party voters or members elect the leaders of the Tea Party movement? Because, I gotta tell you, state Parties do. They hold elections and people win those spots. The state delegation in Delaware were elected by Delaware voters, unlike, say, Dick Armey.
Catsy
@gypsy howell:
That’s worked out so well for Angle!
mak
Some numbers:
There are 621,746 registered voters in the Delaware – 292,738 (47 percent) are Democrats; 182,796 (29 percent) are Republicans; and 146,212 (24 percent) are listed as “other,” most of whom would presumably call themselves independent.
Republican turnout yesterday, at 32%, was considered “good” or “high” by local Republican poll-watchers. Turnout for Dems was decidedly anemic at 12%, but that’s hardly surprising for an election with no heated Democratic contests. With Miss O’Donnell on the ballot, such will obviously not be the case in November.
Fourty-four percent (44%!) of Castle voters polled last night said they would vote for the Democrat if O’Donnell won. Remember, these are registered Republicans in the closed primary state vowing to switch parties come November.
As for Independents, I’d guess a significant portion of Delaware independents are true moderates, (that is, those voters who showed Mike Castle thrashing Coons in earlier polls, as opposed to (1) those indies who are simply low-information, low-conviction voters whose opinions are readily subject to change, or (2) those who are ultra TeePee types who either register libertarian or find even that label too restrictive), so there’s very little chance that Miss O’Donnell will capture a majority of independents, even in this anti-establishment election cycle.
Still, even assuming she gets half the independents in a moderate independent turnout election, if 44% of the 29% of Delawareans who are registered Republican voters won’t vote for Abstinence Barbie in a high turnout cycle, the numbers just aren’t there for old Christine. And this is BEFORE Delaware indies (who could not vote yesterday) are reminded why they have repeatedly voted against her in prior elections.
Unless Chris Coons is caught with a live boy AND a dead girl sometime between now and November, it’s going to be an epic political wipeout of Miss O’Donnell. Coons could probably get away with pulling a Martha Coakley and calling Delaware the Third State or something.
Not that I’d recommend it, since hopefully, with similar TP fails in NY and elsewhere, an 80-20 or even 70-30 O’Donnell bloodbath might even kill the Tea Party media creation itself, at least above the Mason-Dixon Line.
pseudonymous in nc
I’ll repeat myself:
Coons thought he was going to be running against a Delaware institution. Now he’s running against someone who ought to be in a Delaware institution.
He’s surely not going to let this one slip, having seen Coakley fall through complacency against a pretty savvy campaign from Scott Brown. Delaware votes for reliable corporate Dems and reliable corporate Republicans. A teabagger running a full-on teabagger campaign because she’s relying solely on teabagger cash is not going to win a statewide general election in Delaware.
Jeffro
@Punchy: b/c those of us who actually live here and know our neighbors know that 30K primary nuts won’t amount to piddly in the general. Delaware’s a very blue state, and all that really means is that the remaining GOP rump is very red, and very cranky.
Which is what you saw last night. =)
Our local papers are full of quotes from Tea Partiers who are saying even THEY know she can’t win, they just wanted to express how p-o’ed they were at that “traitor” Castle.
Express away, fellow First Staters! ;)
Smurfhole
@Jeffro:
What you said, man. I don’t live in Delaware anymore, but I did spend about 22 of my 32 years there (including the first 18). That state will vote for O’Donnell the day after some weird plague wipes out the 80% of the state that still has functioning brains.
Jeffro
@Smurfhole: 73%…you’re forgetting the ‘27% crazification factor’ ;)
You know, it’s not much of a stretch to say that downstate DE Republicans vs. Mike Castle is where the Tea Party made its first big splash – remember that lady on YouTube screaming at Castle that she “wanted [her] country back!!” ? That was in Sussex County. Hindsight being 20/20, Castle maybe could have taken the hint…
HyperIon
@kay quoted someone saying: I could buy a parrot and train it to say, ‘tax cuts,’ but at the end of the day, it’s still a parrot, not a conservative.
That IS excellent!
Moreover, a very nice post..as usual.
Keep it up.
AND you didn’t screw up the block quotes.
(Does Keith G understand the multiple paragraph bug in the block quoting code?)
But you were so gracious in your reply to him.
Kay, you are classy AND smart.
Update: oops! dead thread.
Smurfhole
@Jeffro:
I allowed for 7% having maybe salvageable brains, with sufficient therapy and medication…
The Tea Party has to be a Kent/Sussex County phenomenon. Once New Castle County votes for real in November, O’Donnell’s name will be consigned to the collective oblivion of failed campaigns everywhere.