When Christine O'Donnell lost the Delaware Senate race, I was greatly disappointed, not so much in her loss-she was always at best a long-shot candidate-but in the way her defeat came about. Not too long after the election was over, there was an analysis at the blog Protein Wisdom that pretty much summed up my feelings over the matter. Here is a portion of it-
Why would we want a Senator Castle?
Seriously. Why? I mean, clearly the Republican primary voters of Delaware didn’t want him, and this was their election. So why do so many GOP cheerleaders wish Republican primary voters of Delaware would have been smart and savvy enough to vote for a guy those voters didn’t want representing them, casting their vote instead for a woman they believed would?
There is nothing “extreme” about the Tea Party message, and there’s nothing in that message that should put off “moderates.” O’Donnell did well with independents, despite having no support from her own party machinery. And yet because GOP establishment types were so quick to scoff and sniff and run away from O’Donnell or Angle (and, initially, Rubio), they lent credence to the idea that the Tea Party is “extreme,” and so obviously racist, fascist, nativist, populist, and anti-intellectual. Not to mention, longing to squeeze into tight black goth garb and couple with the Beast.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if sold on its merits, classical liberalism — and the Tea Party’s message is essentially a classical liberal message — crosses party lines and appeals to anyone who believes in individual liberty, smaller government, equality of opportunity, and the rule of law. It is constitutionalism — legal conservatism / libertarianism — substantively alienated from the rudderless country club Republicanism of Lindsey Graham, or the vote-counting gamesmanship of Karl Rove, for whom winning temporary majorities and chairmanships is more important than governing from a coherent philosophical base.
We don’t need slicker candidates. We need committed candidates.
I myself am not an ideological purist, so there are some issues where me and the Tea Party part company. But by and large, i agree with them far more often than I disagree, and this post in question pretty much sums up my feelings.
But it goes deeper than that. Mike Castle is a perfect example of what is wrong with politics in general. What we have bred is a political class that feels its entitled, both to rule over the unwashed masses, and to protect their own perceived turf by any means imaginable. Castle's membership in the good old boys club of Washington politics made it almost a sure thing that other establishment Republicans would in large measure turn on O'Donnell, or at the very least, turn away from her. She was plainly not one of them, and represented a greater threat to their hegemony within the Republican Party than the Democratic candidate, Chris Coons, or, for that matter, Beau Biden, who had earlier declined to seek the Democratic Party nomination.
There is also something about Delaware that can't be stressed nearly enough. It takes pride in the motto "First In Freedom" because it was the first state to ratify the constitution. It is technically speaking our first state. But it is now, and has been for some time, a wholly owned subsidiary of the banking and finance sectors of the country. It has developed and maintained a corporate friendly environment, this mainly for the benefit of those banking and financial interests.
Those same interests have also propped up the political establishment of the state, and this includes both parties, and their most important leaders. This would include the Bidens, both the current Vice-President, and his son, formerly the state's Attorney General, who declined to run for the seat formerly held by his father when Joe Biden became Vice President.
And, it would also include the man who is now the state's senior Senator, Tom Carper.
One of the people who has been a strong supporter of Joe Biden, in addition to being a former staffer of the Vice-President, is Melanie Sloan, who head of an organization called CREW-Citizens For Responsibility For Ethics In Washington. CREW us funded in part by George Soros think-tank Think Progress.
And it is Crew that has filed an ethics complaint against Christine O'Donnell, which you can read in its entirety here.
Crew filed the complaint on behalf of one Leonard S. Togman, a Delaware citizen and voter who also just happens to be Melanie Sloan's father. Not only is Togman also a supporter of Joe Biden, he has also contributed to not only his past campaigns but also to those of Carper, whom most people think O'Donnell will challenge in 2012.
Is it any wonder Christine O'Donnell, who vociferously denies the charges in the complaint, thinks Joe Biden is pulling strings in an effort to put an end to any of her potential future political aspirations?
It's been established that CREW, despite its claims of being non-partisan, is actually a schill for the Democratic Party and other progressive groups and causes. The report at Weekly Standard is chilling, if true.
Several news stories have pointed out that much of CREW's [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington] funding comes from liberal groups and big donors to Democratic candidates and causes. And all but a handful of its complaints against Members of Congress have targeted Republicans.
But in some cases, there appear to be deeper links between the agenda of the donor and CREW's attacks. In February 2006, CREW asked the Senate Finance Committee to investigate the Center for Union Facts, an anti-union group, and its sister organization, the Center for Consumer Freedom, which CREW claimed are "front organizations for for-profit industry entities."
The complaint noted that the Center for Union Facts Web site had "negative information about unions," including the Service Employees International Union. Later that year, CREW launched a Freedom of Information Act request, followed by a lawsuit, to get the Department of Labor to hand over documents regarding the department's contacts with the founder of the two centers.
On Sept. 1, 2006, CREW received $75,000 from the SEIU, according to documents that the union filed with the Department of Labor.
CREW has also received hundreds of thousands from ARCA, an organization which favors reopening trade with Cuba, and has filed ethics complaints against individuals and companies which favor the current policy. The Executive Director of ARCA has served on the board of CREW, and is now running for Congress as a Democrat. (CREW has attacked her opponent.)
If you need further proof that Sloan is far from non-partisan, all you have to do is visit the website of CREW, where she has posted her bio. It states plainly that she was minority counsel for the House of Representatives, where she worked for both John Conyers, and then New York Representative Charles Schumer.
I think al the above lays to rest any notion that Sloan, or her activist group CREW, are impartial or non-partisan. The question then becomes, why are they after O'Donnell. And why was the FBI brought into it to the extent that they released the news of the investigation of O'Donnell to the press, before O'Donnell herself was even informed about it, in what American Spectator describes as a smear operation?
However, I think Stacy McCain might be actually closer to the truth than anyone else thus far, in pointing out that there's not a whole lot of daylight in Delaware between the Republican and Democratic parties. In doing so, McCain points the finger at Delaware GOP Chairman Tom Ross and the "state GOP insiders".
And it is a fact that there is little difference between the two. Mike Castle, the former Republican House member who Christine O'Donnell trounced in the Delaware Senate primary, probably voted with the US House Democrats AT LEAST AS OFTEN as he voted with Republicans. The majority of the Delaware Republican electorate had understandably had enough, and turned down his bid to run against Chris Coons. When he lost, national Republicans threw a hissy fit. People like Karl Rove were clearly upset that Christine O'Donnell might blow the one clear chance the party might have had to win the Senate seat formerly held by Joe Biden. They became so agitated at the prospect, so infuriated, and frustrated, that they not only refused to support O'Donnell-in many cases they outright spoke out against her.
Had they supported her, stood by her, perhaps she still would have lost, but possibly not. She might have pulled it out, or at the very least she would not have, through no fault of her own, been a drag on the down-ticket Republicans in the race, almost all of who lost handily due to the depressed GOP turnout in Delaware.
Is there any doubt that Castle would like to run for the Senate against Carper in 2012l, and would much prefer not to have to face yet another primary challenge from O'Donnell. But if he had to, he would much prefer a damaged O'Donnell than the conservative darling of the right-wing Republican base, most of who would gladly vote for her again. That is a problem the club will have to deal with.
There is more at stake in elections than merely winning or losing, you see. There is more involved than bragging rights. All of the Delaware political insiders are well-connected, from both parties, and stand to lose little in the way of legitimate political influence in the event of the victory of an outsider like Christine O'Donnell.
Ah, but the operative word here is, after all, legitimate. And when it comes to the shadowy corridors of political power, it's not whether you win or lose, or even how you play the game. All that matters is the unwritten rule-don't make waves.
