Tuesday, September 14, 2010

O'Donnell Conquers Castle

Christine O'Donnell just beat Mike Castle for the GOP Senate nomination. (Rachel Maddow got the video of O'Donnell's anti-masturbation activism from the mid-90s.)

I'd like to see Republicans become a reasonable political party with whom we could have intelligent debates about public policy. But I don't know how we get there from here. Maybe it's by having lots of Christine O'Donnells win primaries and then collapse in general elections. Maybe there needs to be a big intra-GOP civil war, and something coming out of this race will stoke the fires for that, and maybe the election when the civil war really blows up will be one where Democrats make massive gains and pass awesome stuff. It certainly won't be by shutting out Tea Party candidates from ever winning anything -- that ship has already sailed. So the implications of O'Donnell's victory for a non-crazy GOP are hard to determine.

The implications of this for holding onto the Delaware Senate seat are pretty clear, though. The Republican base wasted the national party's top Senate recruit and handed the seat to the Democrats. Unless there's something wrong with Chris Coons, who seems a decent if unspectacular candidate, he's going to Washington.

On balance, a clear win.

2 comments:

Charlene said...

As a yellow dog Democrat ohmygoshshecan'treallybe liberal, I'm setting up the comfy chair and wide screen TV, air popper and Fresca cooling fridge, to watch.

Politics as reality show.

Neil Sinhababu said...

Yes! BTW, I also enjoy Fresca.