Sep 13 2010
Will Tea Party Have Upset In DE, Or Will Far Right Fail Again?
Public Policy Polling is out with a poll showing a nail-biter in the GOP primary in DE for VP Biden’s Senate seat. PPP has Christine O’Donnell – easily the worst candidate the Tea Party has promoted this year (outside a string of really good candidates) – leading Mike Castle 47-44%. This is within the margin of error, so turn out is key and who knows what it will be.
PPP was the only organization to detect Senator Lisa Murkowski’s troubles in her GOP Alaska primary, which she lost to a Tea Party candidate. But you can easily miss the intensity of the independents and center right in a state like DE. The dynamics are just not the same. And pollsters can easily miss the fact the Tea Party has a very small, but intense far right component to it, which makes it appear to be farther right than it really is.
O’Donnell is a true disaster, and goes to show that all political movements and parties have a range of supporters and candidates – from the abysmal to the inspiring. The Tea Party is no different. O’Donnell has some serious issues with the truth, issues with being a role model and issues with being someone you would trust your kids with for 10 minutes. While she may have some gems of sanity here and there, the total package is lacking. It is more a sign how small the conservative movement has become in deep blue states, distilled down to the far right crowd which do not represent the broader American electorate.
We shall see tomorrow if America’s priority is to throw the Dems our or to elect the most unelectable candidate in the nation simply because she is further right of the stronger GOP candidate on a handful of issues. Sadly, we see the right wing zealots raising their intolerant voices again as the would rather see radical conservative lose control of the US Senate to the dems than see a center-right conservative vote in a new GOP Senate Majority Leader. Clearly, there are those on the right who are really just the mirror image of the far left. They are creating a rift in the movement to unseat the Democrats this year, and as usual are out hunting RINOS. Pathetic.
An O’Donnell win would damage the Tea Party across the country, so don’t think the damage could be limited to DE. Someone as shaky as O’Donnell could cause a lot of doubt and loss of support for reasonable candidates in NV, CO, PA, etc. Remember, We The People recently fired the GOP from Congress in the last two elections, they are not swarming to the right out of inspiration. Jim DeMint may get his impotent rump party, pure and ineffective due to its small size (and yes, in politics size counts).
I have  my doubts O’Donnell will win in tomorrow’s primary. Pollsters have not been able to demonstrate any accuracy this season, though PPP has done it on occasion. Whatever the result, it is the way our democracy works so we will accept the decisions of the people of DE. Even if that decisions is just as horrendous as the decisions good Americans made in 2006 and 2008. After all, if conservatives are not for democracy then they are simply pretend conservatives.
Update: Jim Geraghty at NRO has a good round up of the fault lines being established thanks to the far right slamming people who disagree with them – just like liberals do.
Here he goes again….
The hated “far right” has the audacity not to accept what the ruling class, liberal/socialist, thinks it’s better for them…
No more squishy RINOs, no more accommodation to the destruction of our country.
Go, Christine, go!
“Any path that leaves the Senate in the hands of the Dems is idiotic. Any rationale used to achieve that goal is idiotic.”
You say that today. But if O’Donnell wins tomorrow (and it looks like there’s about a 50/50 chance that she will) then feel free to use the rationale I gave you above to explain why, win or lose, it’s not really that big a deal in the larger scheme of things.
You don’t want to be stuck for the next two months moaning that the world has already ended just because of one primary election in Delaware, especially not when it’s just one coin toss’s chance away from going against you.
ivehadit, the problem isn’t so much about far right or far left. In the liberal mindset, it is the role of government to “take care of” people. In the conservative mindset, it is the role of government to enable people to take care of themselves. Whenever a liberal sees a problem such as hunger or homelessness or unemployment, the answer is always a government program to “help” them. A liberal (or what we CALL a liberal these days which is only liberal in an Orwellian sense) will always argue to give those poor folks some cash. Unemployed? No problem, we will send you a check for two years. Conservatives (which are really the classical liberals) want government to take actions that increase employment and allow people to be free of dependence on government.
So there is more to it than whose policy is working today, it is whose policy is more in line with a person’s fundamental notion of what the role of government is. Government plays almost a parental role in the liberal point of view where government plays an infrastructure support and national defense role in the conservative mindset. The world without careful management and programs and an array of various safety nets is scary to a liberal. The notion of an economy left to respond to millions of actions by individuals scares the living daylights out of them. They tend to see it (from my conversations with liberals) as a runaway train or a bus with no driver so they want to see everything carefully managed to the last detail. The other sort of liberal is the one who wants to be on the controlling end of things and who sees these programs as their ticket to a career in managing those who need to be managed. As Milton Friedman said, it is an unholy alliance between “do gooders” and the cynical elite who will use the do gooders’ desire to take care of people to advance their need for control over them.
It doesn’t work. Even Sweden is now moving to the right.
Many democrats are running as conservatives this year (even thought their records are FAR from such), not even listing their party affiliation.
What’s to stop Coons from running to the right of Castle?? I wouldn’t put it past the democrats for one minute.
Love this posted by Rick at Wizbangblog:
“Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Trillion Dollars Ago?”
Castle is as middle of the road as you can get. A Snowe clone if ever there was one. He has a lifetime rating of 52%.
WWS has a point with the minority in the Senate since the House will be able to stop anything the Dem majority in the Senate passes. However, it is predicated on the assumption that Obama will be able to take advantage of Republicans like Clinton did in 1995. The folks in the WH just don’t seem to me to be competent enough to pull that off.
One advantage to having the majority is on the judge issue. The REPs can bottle up the radical judges in committee until 2013. The REPs may need Castle for 60 votes come 2013 because with a REP POTUS, the DEMs will filibuster all the judges like 2003 – 2006.
What is hurting Castle is the Cap-n-Trade issue. But if the DEMs can’t pass it with Kaufman how will they pass it with Castle?
To all the doom & gloom folks panicking over Castle in typical far right hysterics, I would take Castle’s word over the babblings of unknown O’Donnell any day of the week.
No has any proof O’Donnell is nothing more than a poseur for the gullible. She has no record and is prone to wild exaggerations.
Castle is committed to repealing Obamacare. Good enough for me. Of course I don’t do Chicken Little either.
My children love Chicken Little. Even have the video game.
If O’Donnell was a socalled RINO or a Democrat there is no way the people on the right would overlook the lies, the weirdness, the financial shenanigans, the paranoia, the gratuitous law suit against a conservative non profit group for $6.9 million on the grounds that the “conservative philosophy” of the members was such that they believed women were submissive…hence poor Christine lost her job and the only thing that would fix that was a few million. There is so much baggage with this lady there is no way she can win a general election.
Castle is not perfect. Far from it. But he is a moderate Republican with a conservative rating of about 55%. And he can win the general election, something O’Donnell probably can not do in a state as blue as Delaware. If he wins, the Republicans have a shot at taking the majority and firing Harry Reid. Sheesh, how can anyone who says they are conservative throw away an opportunity like that?
As for the PPP poll, it might be right, but I have been leary of PPP polls since the NY23 race last year. They gave Hoffman a huge lead and of course they were very wrong. But remember they are Democratic polsters and it might be that they have another agenda here. Time will tell, the election is just a day away.
I’m with WWS on this one. Thanks for your comment, WWS. Very well said.
WWS:
There is one problem with that, the Senate is where the agenda is really sit. In other words, if the Senate Majority leader does not want a vote to take place he can stop it. Even if the Republicans have the House, if the Democrats maintain control of the Senate…then the Democrats still have one chamber the White House.
And there is no way of knowing what will happen in 2012. Two years is a long long time in politics, just ask Barack Obama.
And I do not know if it is fair to compare Castle to people like Specter and Crist who have switched parties. He is a moderate Republican in a blue state, he has never caucused with Democrats or threatened to or anything like that. He is the kind of politician who could win 12 state wide elections in a blue state. But if he could win this, he will not be around for long anyway. There has to be a strong conservative who is not a fruit cake who can make a run for it next time. Better to have Castle in there now than Coons.
It would have been fine to raise questions about Christine’s past or the positions that she takes.
It would have been great to contrast her policies with Castle’s.
But no, no, no, she was made into the poster girl of the scary, “far right”.
That’s my beef with AJ’s position, he took so often with candidates supported by the grass roots/regular working stiffs like many of us….
WWS, I agree with most of your comments.
I’d like to know too, just what ‘far right’ is.
Are those the folks who believe that the government is a fundamentally dangerous entity only to be tolerated for the few uses to which it is uniquely suited ?
Are those the folks who believe that the constitution is the best construct yet devised for limiting government and maximizing individual freedom and potential, and thereby the common good as well ?
Are those the folks who believe that the closer to a ‘free market’ economy we can get, the greater our freedom and prosperity will be ?
Are those the folks who believe in a government of laws and not of men ?
Are those the folks who perceive threats to our national security realistically and intend to take appropriate actions to defend ourselves ?
Are those the folks who did not need to ‘give Obama several months’ because orientation and intentions were perfectly clear all along for those with the education and experience to see ?
Sure would like to know exactly who these ‘far right’ folks are. Seem pretty dangerous to me. I just have trouble picking them out from the average concerned citizen possessed of eyes and a reasonably functional brain.
Terry, we are headed into two years of legislative gridlock no matter who ends up controlling the Senate. That’s why I consider the House crucial, but the Senate not so much. Winning it would be nice, of course, but in the current climate not much is gained by that extra level of control.
Here’s why: there are three centers of power that must cooperate in order to pass legislation: the House, the Senate, and the President. It takes the agreement of all three to pass anything, but it only takes control of 1 of the 3 to block anything. By winning the House, the GOP will be able to block any bad bills coming through. BUT since the Presidency will not change no matter what happens this fall, the Democrats will be able to block anything the Republicans want to do even if they control both chambers. And when you consider that at best the GOP might get a 1 vote majority in the Senate, the Dems will easily be able to filibuster anything they don’t like. A Senate split that closely is guaranteed to be passive and essentially worthless, since legislatively the minority party has a built in advantage over the majority party. (The minority party does not have the ability to propose new bills, but they can easily kill any that the majority propose, thus making the majority party look weak and directionless)
So, winning control of the Senate for the next 2 years means getting tagged with the blame for a session which is guaranteed to accomplish very, very little. You can see why I don’t think that’s much of a prize. And it would allow Obama to spend the next 2 years evading responsibility for what’s happening and blaming a “do-nothing Republican Congress” for anything bad that happens – it’ll make his re-election effort much, much easier.
There are only two good reasons for controlling the Senate: by controlling the Judiciary committee, it’s easier to block judicial nominees – allthough the Republicans have been doing a pretty good job of that already with only 41. Second, the Majority Leader can keep the Senate in session over vacation periods by leaving a couple of Senators on duty, thus blocking Recess Appointments. But even though Harry Reid did this to GWB, I’m not sure McConnell has the stones to do this to Obama, so this may not be of any practical advantage.
Controlling the House is everything this go-round. The Senate, not so much.
Re: WWS on 13 Sep 2010 at 9:32 am
Excellent post.
The Senate can kill what comes out of the House. The Republicans could pass some measure and it would die in the Senate because someone like Harry Reid is running the place.
Republicans would have a far better chance of accomplishing a roll back if the Democrats did not control the Senate. And what is more, the more seats you win now, the more you have..even if you do not quite make it to majority every seat gets you one seat closer.
The idea that somehow we are better off if we lose is ridiculous, we will get tagged as responsible anyway just be winning the House…only we will lack the power to really do anything and I am not so sure that Obama won’t win a second term anyway.
You never know about these things, throwing away elections now is just dumb.
BTW, I just heard Charles Krauthammer lay into the O’Donnell people. He used words like capricious and destructive to describe endorsing this woman and he said that if the Republicans throw away seats like this we can forget repealing Obamacare. And CK is not a dummie.
Jonas:
O’Donnell is a social conservative. The woman actually has made masturbation an issue. That is what we are talking about.
So far right would be someone who is out of the mainstream.
In fact when you hear that 40% say they are conservative, only about 9% of them say they are very conservative…and I bet a lot of those 9% would call the other 30% RINOs.
Today Mark Levin went after the conservative bloggers at Powerline for not being sufficiently conservative, even though they have years of conservative blogging and writing to their credit. He also went after Weekly Standard, Patterico and all sorts of other people for not being sufficiently conservative in his view, in other words they were critical of O’Donnell, hence sullied.
So I would say that far right might be someone who insists that you nominate and support a candidate that can not win in your state based on the belief that if they can when a state wide election then they are probably sullied in some way.
Wow, it gets worse…broken by Mark Levin:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/bills/h_res_1258/
Castle voted to impeach Bush of high crimes.