Delaware are you aware?

Show All

Recent Contributors

Blog Roll

15 September 2010

All year, one of the easiest Republican pickups in the forthcoming midterm elections has looked to have been Joe Biden's former Delaware Senate seat. Although Delaware is usually a safely blue seat, it has a great deal of fondness for Republican Mike Castle. Castle was the state's governor from 1985 to 1992, and has been its only representative in the House since 1993. He's a moderate conservative, and was expected to easily win this November.

Well, politics is a business that makes fools of fortune tellers, and MSNBC is currently reporting that Castle has lost today's Republican primary to Christine O'Donnell, a Sarah Palin-endorsed, Tea Party-backed conservative. (Delaware Elections has her up 53.2-46.8, with 320 of 325 districts reporting.) O'Donnell has drawn attention not only for shaking up what should have been an easy Republican victory, but for her exceptionally conservative views; she has been a vocal promoter of sexual abstinence, and, bizarrely, in the '90s, condemned masturbation on MTV.

Christine O'Donnell might find support in some of the more red states in the country, but in liberal, east coast Delaware, she's a much tougher prospect, even in a climate favourable to Republicans. She may still win, but the Democrats have a very feasible chance of hanging on to a seat it had written off as lost.

They will be happy about that, but O'Donnell's victory tonight is not a good thing for America. Should she win, yet another deeply conservative Republican will head to a Senate already riven by partisan divisions. I've said before that Castle when he would "almost certainly" (oops) take up the Delaware Senate seat, would benefit the Senate by joining the few Republican moderates left in the body. Now, unless as Erin Riley speculates, Castle runs as an independent, the number of Republicans even slightly interested in governing rather than simply politicking remains at three: Scott Brown, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.

Given the party's current policies, America would not be served well by a Senate under Republican control. But it definitely needs more moderate Republicans in the institution. Castle's loss tonight is much better for Democrats than it is for America.

UPDATE: A couple of folks have told me that the only way Castle could now win the election is by having voters write-in his name on the ballot. Such a victory would be highly unusual, and Castle would be unlikely to campaign for such a thing anyway. Polls show that O'Donnell is quite unpopular with the Delaware general electorate, and so the Democrats have a pretty good shot at keeping this seat blue.

Tags: Christine Odonnell, Delaware, Mike Castle, Sarah Palin, Tea Party