When Christine O'Donnell won the GOP Senate nomination in Delaware last night, reactions were quite predictable, from both the left and right.
LEFT: OMG, what a gift to the Democratic Party.
RIGHT: ZOMG, we can't support this dingy broad. She's gonna get us killed.
Nearly 24 hours has passed, the evening news cycle is about to begin, and the narratives have now been established.
Allow me to disabuse the celebrants on the left of a couple of things...
As has been well documented today, Karl Rove has become the point man for the ZOMG crowd in the GOP. He has repeatedly blasted Christine O'Donnell and the Delaware teapartiers on Fox, and was seen wringing his hands on Hannity's show last night. Don't fall for it.
Rove was sent out to rally the troops, in a reverse-psychology kind of way. Think about it. Like Boehner on the tax issues the other day, a national GOP player like Rove simply doesn't go off the Republican reservation without prior authorization. When one of them does, there is an ulterior motive. If we've learned nothing else over the past 10 or 20 years, I hope that progressives have learned that the GOP has mastered the art of Lucy-Charlie Brown football.
In my opinion, all of the GOP noise in the past 24 hours has been staged to increase the drama (and name recognition) of their new pretty face, Christine O'Donnell.
Even more telling is that Rove is trying to telegraph a play to the Democratic Party campaign strategists: go after O'Donnell on her personal finances.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. There are so many people dealing with personal finance issues today, and that's exactly what the GOP king makers want - people to identify with Christine O'Donnell because she has personal financial issues. What Rove is doing is called 'inoculation' - in political terms, it means he's getting O'Donnell's warts out on the table before her opponent can do it, and it takes the issue out of the campaign. Great. Leave her personal finances out of it. While it's certainly relevant, again, too many people are walking a mile in her shoes these days.
The bottom line? Rove's unusual commentary is a GOP feature of the 2010 campaign, not a bug. Watch what they do, not what they say.
And for God's sake, don't think that Coons is a lock for this Senate seat. Again, that's exactly what the GOP is hoping for. A month ago, Mike Castle thought he was a lock. That didn't work out so well.
Two weeks ago, everyone's hair was on fire here on DKos.
Keep it lit. Focused, but lit.