A Pox On Our House

Well, this is ever so helpful:

The Republican Party of Delaware has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission, accusing one of its own Senate candidates of illegally collaborating with the Tea Party Express…

The complaint alleges that the O’Donnell campaign is “knowingly accepting illegal campaign contributions from the Tea Party Express” political action committee. It cites two “alarming” instances:

— O’Donnell has knowingly accepted excessive contributions from the Tea Party Express that were directly solicited on behalf of the O’Donnell campaign, according to the filing.

— O’Donnell has accepted illegal excessive contributions from the Tea Party Express by engaging in a statewide coordinated communications effort in support of her campaign. This means, according to the complaint, that every advertisement that is being run by the Tea Party Express in support of O’Donnell is a violation of federal law.

Why is this "really dumb"?  Three reasons:

1) It isn't just an attack on O'Donnell, but on the entire Tea Party movement - you know, the wing of the GOP that has single-handedly resurrected the party's political energy and viability.  If you sat down and tried to think up a more effective gambit for igniting the long-media-predicted Republican Civil War, I don't think you could come up with a better strategy for comprehensive partisan political suicide than this

2) It isn't just a naked admission that Castle is in trouble, it's tantamount to throwing in the towel by throwing a pointless, dare I say Murkowskiesque tantrum.  Confident campaigns - and parties - conduct themselves the same way that elite running backs like Walter Payton and Emmit Smith used to when they scored touchdowns and flipped the ball to the ref rather than engaging in flamboyant end zone celebrations: "Act like you've been there, and will be again".

3) Yesterday I queried whether TPers would go all out to screw Mike Castle if he wound up prevailing over Christine O'Donnell on Tuesday.  In the event that he does, doesn't this give them even more incentive to do so?  In fact, doesn't this pretty much clinch that whichever campaign loses the primary is going to sue to overturn the result, turning this into a surrogate intra-Republican blood feud that could tear the entire party apart?

{sigh}  Maybe it was too good to last.  There was always the undercurrent within the TPer movement that had it more in for RINOs than it did Democrats.  But over the preceding seventeen months since the Tea Party spontaneously arose, their eyes remained on the prize of bringing down the Pelosi Poliburo using the GOP as its vehicle.  And while the party establishment wasn't too crazy about it, like poor ol' Bob Dole in 1994, they stood to be the big winner recipients and figured not to look (or punch) a gift horse in the mouth.

Not anymore.  In the O'Donnell "insurgency," the TPers are poised to vindicate pretty much everything the Obamedia has sneeringly said about them as being a "threat" to the Republican Party.  Not because they're "extreme" ideologically, but because they're intolerant of any 'Pubbie the slightest bit less "pure" than they are, and as such can never, EVER win enough elections to gain the power they would need to put their "true conservatism" into practice.

If anything can save the Democrats from the electoral Armegeddon they've brought down upon themselves, this is it.  And Christine O'Donnell will be the poster-child.

Oh, and whither Sarah Palin leads, Jim DeMint follows. {sigh}