Post-primary Wednesday. The inmates in the GOP continue to run the asylum.
Matthew Norman (The Independent):
Nurturer-in-chief of this suicidal instinct, inevitably, is Sarah Palin, the Jimmy Jones of the Grand Old Party. Buoyed by a spectacularly destructive Vanity Fair portrait quoting her weeping over her own inadequacy to cope with the demands of governing Alaska, Palin flirts ever more openly with running for the far less challenging position of president. Those who snort derisively at her chances of winning the GOP nomination in any field containing better informed and more articulate rivals than might be found in a Petri dish may find in Delaware a compelling vignette.
That primary was held yesterday, and the result is unknown at the time of writing. Yet even if the Republican establishment candidate, a moderate Congressman called Mike Castle, defeated his Palin-endorsed, Tea Party Express opponent Christine O'Donnell, the fact that the outcome was in doubt to the last alone tells its tale.
In opinion polls matching them against Democratic candidate Chris Coons, Mr Castle wins by a mile and Ms O'Donnell loses by further still. No wonder the Democrats have been "salivating" at the notion of facing the latter, and the Republican establishment quaking at the prospect of her victory obliterating the party in a state not given to the fear-stoking nastery that makes the Tea Party such an impressive tribute act to the late Joe McCarthy.
Peter Fenn:
Poor Republicans. They are beginning to resemble the bar scene from Star Wars. They are purging the conservative voices in their party who have any sort of pragmatic perspective and substituting true kooks. These are not just candidates with hard right views -- they took over the Republican Party in the late '70s and early '80s -- these are candidates who, as the Republican chair in Delaware put it, don't deserve to be dog catcher. Serious ethics issues. No record of accomplishment. Little of any substance on the issues. They are, pure and simple, vessels for anger and unbridled simplicity. The Grand Old Party is fast devouring itself. Political tsunamis do wash up a lot of dead fish on the beach -- it happened when Republicans captured 12 Senate seats in 1980. It appears to be happening again, only worse.
Nate Silver:
But voting is principally an emotional act -- and voters don't like the sense of having been told what to do. They rebelled against it in Massachusetts and they rebelled against in Delaware; sometimes, they may resent it so much that they will go to arguably self-destructive lengths in order to avoid casting the vote that they're "supposed" to cast.
EJ Dionne:
The primary here today will determine definitively whether the Tea Party is capable of carrying its rebellion to a truly absurd extreme.
Want to know how angry the state’s Republican leaders are at the campaign of Christine O’Donnell, the perennial candidate who is threatening Rep. Mike Castle in the U.S. Senate race? Here’s what Delaware Republican Party chairman Tom Ross told me last night:
I could buy a parrot and train it to say, ‘tax cuts,’ but at the end of the day, it’s still a parrot, not a conservative.
That, so far, is my favorite line of this election season.
LA Times:
"You have a very inexperienced candidate in O'Donnell who has flaws that are even being pointed out by Republicans, against Chris Coons, who is a very good candidate," said Nathan Gonzales, an analyst for the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. Gonzales called the result "a game-changer."
Some policy to go with your morning politics. Tom Harkin (on the Prevention Institute website):
"Today the Senate voted to block an attack on the Prevention Trust Fund—an attack that represented the same old penny-wise-pound-foolish thinking that now makes America’s health care system so costly and ineffective," Senator Tom Harkin notes. "We have systematically neglected wellness and disease prevention in this country—as evidenced by the fact that the United States spends twice as much per capita on health care as European countries, but is twice as sick with chronic disease. This amendment perpetuated the disastrous notion that we can neglect and de-fund prevention efforts without paying a huge long-term cost in unnecessary chronic disease and disability—as well as skyrocketing health insurance premiums. In blocking it, the Senate upheld the old principle that an ounce of prevention truly is worth a pound of cure."