Tea Party candidates jolt GOP establishment

What happened

The Republican Party was embroiled in an internal struggle over its future direction this week after Tea Party–backed conservatives pulled off stunning upsets of establishment GOP candidates in Delaware and New York. In Delaware, Christine O’Donnell, a Christian activist with a history of eccentric statements and financial problems, upended veteran Republican Rep. Mike Castle in the Republican Senate primary. Her 53 percent to 46 percent victory over the moderate Castle—who’d been backed by The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and a host of establishment Republicans—was funded by the California-based Tea Party Express and fueled by automated phone calls recorded by Sarah Palin. “The Republican Party has lost its way,” O’Donnell said, declaring the end of “politics as usual.” Admirers immediately began calling her an “East Coast Sarah Palin.”

In New York, Buffalo millionaire Carl Paladino trounced the GOP establishment choice for governor, former Rep. Rick Lazio, by nearly 2-to-1. “We are mad as hell,” Paladino said. A first-time candidate who gained notoriety when he admitted forwarding racist jokes and pornographic images in e-mail, Paladino is widely considered a weaker opponent than Lazio against Democratic nominee Andrew Cuomo, New York’s attorney general. In Delaware, Republicans who had hoped for a GOP takeover of the U.S. Senate fear that O’Donnell—who has been accused by former campaign aides of using campaign contributions to pay for housing and fund her personal life—will lose a general election that Castle was expected to win easily. State Republican Party Chairman Tom Ross said O’Donnell is “not a viable candidate for any office, from dogcatcher to senator.”

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What the editorials said

“He was supposed to be a shoo-in,” said Economist.com. Instead, popular Delaware congressman Castle, a former two-term governor, fell to the Tea Party in a “decidedly nasty” race. O’Donnell’s campaign suggested that Castle, 71, might die in office, and even suggested he was secretly gay. Without serious financial support from the Republican Party, O’Donnell has little chance to win in November. Then again, “Tea Partiers have heard such talk somewhere before.”

“Americans are fed up with career politicians, and rightly so,” said the Augusta, Ga., Chronicle. If we want change, we’d better get used to candidates like O’Donnell, who lack a certain “amount of polish.” When the GOP brings in “the kind of citizen-legislators the country’s founders envisioned,” they can’t be held to the same “slick” standards. Besides, “we’ve tried slick already.”

What the columnists said

Republicans had a chance to wrest control of the U.S. Senate from Democrats in November, said Steve Kornacki in Salon.com. That chance ended with the nomination of O’Donnell, “a right-wing gadfly and serial debtor who has equated lust with adultery and claimed that her political opponents follow her home at night and hide in the bushes.” Democratic nominee Chris Coons is now the prohibitive favorite.

Delaware exposed a “proxy war between the Tea Party and establishment GOP,” said Mark McKinnon in TheDailyBeast.com. Castle was widely considered a RINO—Republican in Name Only—for his centrist stances and willingness to support cap-and-trade legislation. By rejecting him, the Tea Party proved “it’s become the driving force and voice of Republican voters.” The “liberal media narrative” insists that Republicans are now hopelessly divided, said James Taranto in WSJ.com. We heard similar nonsense when Tea Party candidates triumphed in Alaska, Utah, Colorado, and Nevada. Yet all but one of these candidates are favorites to win in November, and even Sharron Angle in Nevada is running neck and neck with Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader. If this is trouble, let’s have another dose.

In Delaware, Republicans just took an overdose, said Jonathan Chait in The New Republic Online. Party leaders and conservative organs like the Journal have spent the past 20 months calling President Obama “a socialist, a radical, a threat to freedom.” They know this is just political rhetoric—a tactic designed to rouse the base. But since “the conservative base is not in on the joke,” it ends up nominating extremists like O’Donnell. Come November, we’ll see how that works out.