Monday punditry.
WaPo:
Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware is calling out the Republican establishment in Washington for not helping her underdog campaign.
In an interview on ABC's "This Week" that aired Sunday, the tea party favorite said she has asked the National Republican Senatorial Committee for help but that the group is standing on the sidelines even though her Democratic rival, Chris Coons, is getting a boost from his party.
Jack Conway debating Rand Paul:
Conway: "as AG of KY, I'm always amused to get a lecture in constitutional law from a self-certified ophthalmologist"
Ross Douthat:
The easy thing would be to take them at their word. But for liberals, that would be too simple. The Democrats are weeks away from a midterm thumping that wasn’t supposed to happen, and the liberal mind is desperate for a narrative, a storyline, something to ease the pain of losing to a ragtag band of right-wing populists. Something that explains the Tea Parties — and then explains them away.
The "Tea Partiers are racists" theory is the most inflammatory storyline, but there are many more. Let’s consider them, in order of increasing plausibility:
They're yours, Ross. Make your peace with them, explain them away.
Newsweek:
Given the personal fortune Linda McMahon has tapped to finance her Republican run for U.S. Senate in Connecticut, you’d think she’d hold a formidable edge against her Democratic opponent, state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. She’s pumped $22 million of her own money into the campaign, while Blumenthal has raised only $3.5 million. She’s used that cash advantage to unload a barrage of ads that paint him as a career politician, clueless about how to create jobs and untrustworthy for having embellished his Vietnam War service. By contrast, she’s depicted herself as exactly the sort of business-savvy outsider these grim economic times call for. With only two weeks to go until Election Day, however, polls show her trailing Blumenthal by about 10 points.
With a few exceptions, McMahon’s fellow millionaires (and a couple of billionaires) aren’t faring much better.
NY Times:
Mr. Gibbs said that whatever disaffection Americans have with the Democratic Party was not because of the president’s policies but because of the difficult economic picture, with 8 million jobs having been lost and unemployment at 9.6 percent, a situation he largely blamed on the previous Republican administration.
"I think at the end of the day, people are going to understand that message and not turn over control of Congress to people that want to take us back to what we’re trying to get out of," he said.
NY Times on their NY Gov poll with R-Paladino crashing and burning (59-24):
The two men, along with five minor party candidates, will appear Monday evening in the first debate of the campaign. Mr. Cuomo’s popularity appears to be fueled in part by widespread doubts about Mr. Paladino’s temperament and qualifications.
Some 59 percent of voters in the poll said that Mr. Paladino did not have the right temperament and personality to be a good governor, while 55 percent said that Mr. Paladino, a novice candidate who made millions as a real estate developer, did not have the right kind of experience.