The Perils Of Purity

Reliable tighty-righty Michelle Malkin is still on anti-Castle red alert even though he's no longer a factor in the Delaware Senate race:

It’s been twenty-four hours since Delaware GOP Senate primary winner Christine O’Donnell dethroned nine-term Soros Republican incumbent Mike Castle. As of tonight, he still hadn’t placed an obligatory call to congratulate her — and his e-mail to supporters doesn’t mention her at all, according to the Delaware News Journal.

Even more intriguingly, the paper tweets that Castle’s lines of communication worked quite smoothly when he took calls from…President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden last night.

Double-M snidely asks if Castle is making himself The One's new "pet".

Well, I'd say that this makes both sides of the GOP Civil War even in the "still fighting the war after the official armistice" department.

The answer to her taunt is, unequivocably, NO:

Castle has spent the past thirty-six hours fielding phone calls and pats on the back from well-wishing colleagues and other politicians, including President Obama, Vice President Biden, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and dozens of others. He said that he was coming to grips with the reasons for his defeat – a conservative rebellion in the southern portion of the state that was given extra ammunition by Sarah Palin’s endorsement of O’Donnell. But he said that there probably wasn’t enough time in the next six weeks for him to get over some of the attacks lobbed in the contest.

“There are a lot of personal feelings in all this,” Castle said in an interview off the House floor, citing “some of the personal smears” in the bitterly fought campaign. “At this point I have no intention of endorsing.”

He ruled out supporting the Democratic nominee, New Castle County Executive Christopher Coons, suggesting that he will remain neutral in the run for Senate.

I said yesterday that he should swallow his pride and endorse O'Donnell for the good of what party unity can be salvaged in the wake of such an electoral Stalingrad.  I say it again now.  But I'll also say that I can understand how and why he feels the way he does.  Remember what Mike Castle is: a moderate.  Moderates are called "squishes" for a reason: they don't LIKE hard edges.  They don't LIKE conflict.  They like compromise and comity and "going along to get along."  That's what Mike Castle has done for his entire bluehen political career, and he's won over a dozen state-wide elections doing it that way.  For him to be submarined out of nowhere and sucker-punched senseless with a withering barrage of below-the-belt punches right at the finish line has got to be unimaginably galling.  It offends the gentlist sensibilities that are the closest thing to a core principle a RINO possesses.

Really, it's why RINOs usually lose to Democrats.  This time a(n alleged) conservative did it to him, but remember one of the cardinal rules of modern politics: Democrats get to do that sort of thing without consequences; conservatives do not.

All things considered, if I'm surprised about anything, it's that Mike Castle isn't endorsing Coons.  After the guttertrashing CO'D threw at him, perhaps she and her supporters should be taking his neutrality as the comparitive generosity it is and leaving well enough alone.

But that would require prudence and reasonableness and big-picture thinking - the three biggest "dearths" of the O'Donnell campaign, and now, jarringly, of the Tea Party movement, including the "true conservative" whose "true conservative" pledge to fight for Christine to the gates of RINO hell and back came all of three days before primary election day:

“They say she can’t win and that by supporting her, I’ve helped lose the seat for Republicans,” DeMint said. “Well, I’ve been in the majority with Republicans who didn’t have principles, and we embarrassed ourselves and lost credibility in front of the country. Frankly, I’m at a point where I’d rather lose fighting for the right cause than win fighting for the wrong cause.”…

“National Republicans are not going to invest real money in this race and her primary opponent, Representative Mike Castle, is refusing to endorse her,” DeMint wrote to supporters of his political action committee, the Senate Conservatives Fund.

“The dirty little secret in Washington is that the establishment is quietly rooting for Christine to lose so they can continue to peddle their discredited line that conservatives cannot win.”…

Oh, really?  Well, guess what, Senator?  The establishment wanted to win that Senate seat, which was why they were behind Mike Castle, who had it in the bag.  It's why Beau Biden declined to run, leaving "the bearded Marxist" as designated sacrificial goat.  And even if the Republican poobahs were "rooting for Christine to lose," - which was solidly refuted yesterday - they wouldn't have to, because she's losing already.  And it isn't exactly a new development.  Which I will guaran-damn-tee the whole frickin' world Jim DeMint knew damn good and well, which is why he didn't endorse "Christine" until her crazy train was pulling out of the station and taking his own core backers, and his own right-wing "street cred" with it.  Which is most likely why he's riding the fraying edge of sanity in this bridge-burning outburst.

I'm sure it would come as a shock to the Architect, of all people, to learn that he wants conservatives, and particularly conservative women, to lose in order to self-fulfillingly prove they can't win:

A third-party group linked to Rove has been the most aggressive, highest-spending outside force behind Reid’s opponent, Sharron Angle, launching withering attacks that have helped keep the onetime long shot competitive against Reid…

Rove wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO that his efforts through Crossroads GPS and its sister group, American Crossroads, are not driven by his personal feelings toward the majority leader. And he declined to lay out his views of Reid, instead referring POLITICO to his new biography — which is none too kind to Reid…

In total, Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads — which was the brainchild of Rove and former Bush White House official Ed Gillespie — have spent $1.7 million in Nevada on ads slamming Reid, most notably on the economic stimulus. The group has earmarked an additional $10 million for Nevada and seven other states to bolster GOP voter turnout on Election Day…

Since leaving the White House, Rove has become a more public critic of Reid, including last year on Fox News, when he called Reid “pathetic and insulting” and a “weak leader” as the health care debate raged in the Senate.

Wow.  An awfully remarkable chance for a "RINO cancer" to take on another supposedly "flakey" "wingnut" "extremist" who...."can't win".  Or maybe he thinks Sharron Angle CAN win because all the baggage attributed to her by the Obamedia is bogus nonsense, whereas Christine O'Donnell's is very, very real, and all the more debilitating in a much "bluer" state.

Over to you, Charles Krauthammer:

What O'Donnelloids refuse to hear is that what Krauthammer says here, and what Rove said the other night, are not attacks on Christine O'Donnell.  They are nothing more and nothing less than the plain, simple truth.  Christine O'Donnell is a bad candidate.  She has a ton of exploitable liabilities, especially personal ones.  And she is highly unlikely to be able to make up a double-digit lead in hostile territory no matter how many "moneybombs" she sets off.  Her zealot supporters jamming their fingers in their ears and humming at the top of their lungs and shooting every messenger through the head with their RINO guns isn't going to change that.  And after she goes down to inevitable, crushing defeat in November, you can count on her zealot supporters following their leader's life example and blaming everybody else - especially the GOP "evil empire" - for their own candidate's failings and weaknesses and their own horrible judgment that proved to be her downfall.

But, in the end, this is only one seat, right?  If we fall a seat short this time, we'll make up the difference in 2012, when the Dems have twice as many Senate seats on the line as we do.

Or will we?  I picture this triumphalist tighy-rightie rigidity going viral and what I end up with is a nightmare.

Let's say that November is every bit the Donk bloodbath it looks to be.  Republicans retake the House with 240+ Members, and tie up the Senate 50-50 (would have recaptured the majority, but the TPE squandered the gimmie pickup in Delaware).  Question: In which direction are Tea Party expectations going to go after a joyride like this cycle has been?

Answer: Through the roof.  They're going to expect the moon and all its green cheese.  Permanentize the Bush tax cuts.  Cut the federal budget back to 1984 levels.  Abolish half the Cabinet-level departments.  Repeal ObamaCare.  Impeach Obama AND Biden so John Boehner can keep the Oval Office warm for Sarah Palin in 2013.  The sky won't be the limit.  There will BE no limit.

And that's just the first hundred days of the 112th Congress.

And they'll likely get none, or very little, of it until 2013 at the earliest.

What is reasonable to expect is that no more damage will be done, and the groundwork will be laid for more gains in 2012 and the dethroning of The One based upon his obstructing all of the above - and, believe it or not, he IS going to be president for another two years and the Consitution DOES give him veto power.  But I am now seriously questioning whether all these new-to-politics folks are capable of grasping this.  I wonder if they understand that advancing an agenda takes a long time and a lot of (ugh) politics and (shudder) compromises and (gag) coalition-building at times.  That there is, has been, and will always be, like it or not, give & take, mutual backscratching, and yes, deal-making involved with moving the proverbial chains.

TPers' experience in politics will have been like the rookie whose team wins the Super Bowl in his first season, and then he never even makes the playoffs again the rest of his career.  You know what such players always say: "I thought this it how it'd be every year.  I didn't know how hard it is just to make the playoffs, much less advance and get to the Big Game."  And when they don't get everything they want by next spring, they're going to get impatient, they're going to get angry, and they're going to blame not Democrat obstructionism, but the "RINO" establishment for being too "weak" and "spineless" and "wishy-washy" and "betraying the people who elected them" by not "ramming" everything through like ObamaCare was.  Senators Angle, Buck, Johnson, Toomey, Rubio, et al may even be consigned to the RINO enemies list if TP rage burns hot enough.

Now look a little further ahead and picture Mike Huckabee clotheslining Sarah Palin out of the GOP primaries and Mitt "RomneyCare" Romney emerging with the '12 presidential nomination.  Party split, nay MELTDOWN, anyone?  And the door would open wide to Hopenchange with the Pelosi Poliburo, Reloaded.

Before Delaware, I had no such worries.  Now they seem almost inevitable.

No wonder Karl Rove was horrified Tuesday night.  He saw America's remaining life flash before his eyes, with its would-be saviors wielding the long knives.

But there is a consolation, my friends.  Though we will die by the blade of an enemy that was stupidly guided by the hand of a "friend," at least we will die "pure".