Tea Party Favorites in U.S. Senate Races

Clearly we need a new and better public.

"Up next: Christine O'Donnell for U.S. Senate in Delaware," declared Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express, which says it spent some $600,000 in the final weeks of Alaska's Senate race to help Miller. The California-based group says it will shell out $250,000 on O'Donnell's behalf.

Rove Fires Up Talk on O’Donnell’s Electability
(By Louise Radnofsky, The Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2010)

Republican strategist Karl Rove is firing up Twitter and the blogosphere today with his description of Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell as one of the party’s candidates with “serious character problems, who cause ordinary voters who are not philosophically aligned with us to not vote for our candidates out of concern of what they said and what they do.”

Rove, discussing the Delaware result with talk show host Sean Hannity last night on the Fox News Channel, said he sees a loss for Republicans. “This is not a race we’re going to be able to win,” he said.

The GOP establishment is trying to figure out how to mend fences with the tea party candidates who are now the official Republican nominees, or, more specifically, which fences to mend (the National Republican Senatorial Committee has already made clear that it has no plans to spend money in Delaware now.)

That’s brought a swift backlash from Republican primary voters and local activists who say they’ve just taken back control of their party from establishment bosses.

O’Donnell offered her view this morning. “We have to rise above this nastiness and unify for the greater good, because there’s a lot of work to be done and there are a lot of people who want to get involved if the Republican Party would,” she said in an interview with the Associated Press. On ABC’s “Good Morning America,” she called for an end to “this Republican cannibalism.”

The Hannity-Rove exchange Tuesday night spotlights the GOP split. Fox News Channel is owned by News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal. Rove is a columnist for the newspaper. Here’s a sample of the exchange:

Rove: I’ve met her. I got to tell you, I wasn’t frankly impressed as her abilities as a candidate. And again, these serious questions about how does she make her living? Why did she mislead voters about her college education? How come it took nearly two decades to pay her college bills so she could get her college degree? How did she make a living? Why didn’t she sue a well-known and well - conservative think tank?

Hannity: This is probably one of the few times we’re going to disagree here because I met her. I’ve interviewed her a lot over the years. I found her quite impressive. More importantly, she is a solid conservative. I think what people are saying in this primary, in this race and I think all across the country in these other races that we are mentioning here is that you know what, if you vote for cap and tax and have an opponent that says they wouldn’t they have an choice, they have an option.

So I think it was very substantive, very based on issues, very based on the voting record of one and the promised voting record of another.

Rove: Again, you are making my case this was about Mike Castle’s bad votes. It does conservatives little good to support candidates who at the end of the day while they may be conservative in their public statements do not event the characteristics of rectitude, truthfulness and sincerity and character that the voters are looking for.

We’ll see how she can answer these questions. She sure as heck didn’t answer them thus far in the campaign and not in the general election that she will be asked about.

Hannity: I interviewed her and I felt her explanations were more plausible —

Rove: Did you ask her about the people who were following her home to her headquarters and how she has checked each night in the bushes? Did you asked her - I mean, there were a lot of nutty things she has been saying that just simply don’t add up to —

Hannity: It sounds like you don’t support her, but I will tell you, I think —

Rove: I’m for the Republican, but I got to tell you, we were looking at eight to nine seats in the Senate. We are now looking at seven to eight in my opinion. This is not a race we’re going to be able to win.

Hannity: You may be right in the end, I don’t know. We can look into our crystal ball and can say things. I would argue back to you gently that I don’t think we can make progress in stopping the Obama agenda with rhino Republicans that, you know are not going to be there when the solid votes are needed.

Rove: I agree. But we also can’t make progress if we have candidates who got serious character problems, who cause ordinary voters who are not philosophically aligned with us to not vote for our candidates out of concern of what they said and what they do.

Hannity: We send people to Washington and forgot why we send them there and they got fat and lazy and out of control. And they’re paying a price and they should pay the price.

Rove: And in 2006 that we had people who had really violated the people’s trust by engaging in acts of corruption, which is why the Democrat culture of corruption theme was so powerful in 2006.

Hannity: I don’t hear one allegation that begins to compare to Charlie Rangel or William Jefferson or anything like that.

Rove: That’s not a very good defense.

Hannity: They seemed to be trumped up charges from my standpoint that the Republican establishment was throwing against her.

O'Donnell was a representative for "Concerned Women For America" a conservative religious group that believes children should be taught creationism, abstinence-only sex education, etc

In the end, though, focusing only on O'Donnell's problems, as the Washington establishment is doing, misses the spirit that was unmistakable all around Delaware on Tuesday. For a large group of conservatives, watching Christine O'Donnell come out of nowhere -- actually, lifting her up on their shoulders out of nowhere -- has been a huge boost after the frustrations of the final years of the Bush administration and the first years of the Obama administration. Those conservatives feel enormously empowered by what they have accomplished, and they are important to the Republican party's fortunes this November and beyond. The lords of the backroom have got to find a better way of dealing with them than simply dumping on their candidate.


Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Christine-ODonnell-gives-GOP-establishment-a-thumpin-102942444.html#ixzz0zexekegA

O'Donnell was a representative for "Concerned Women For America" a conservative religious group that believes children should be taught creationism, abstinence-only sex education, etc.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UFn_DoaSKw[/youtube]