How revealing an election result can be in the age of the Tea Party Movement. In spite of the massive paradigm shift that has taken place in American politics over the last 19 months, the reactions of the political class on both sides of the aisle to the Delaware senate primary have demonstrated a stunning obtuseness and palpable condescension among those who consider themselves the intellectual superiors to everyday Americans.
Commonsense conservative Christine O’Donnell’s impressive victory over liberal Republican Mike Castle might have been a “small wonder” for conservatism, but for GOP elites, it’s nothing short of a “capricious” (to use Charles Krauthammer’s descriptor) move by purists who evidently don’t know what’s good for them – or more to the point – most beneficial to Beltway Republicans.
How dare those Delaware peasants, in exercising their Constitutional right to vote in their party’s primary, select the candidate that most reflects their values and the vision set forth by our Founding Fathers? Don’t they know it’s more important for the Republican Party to win at all costs, even if it means sending a 30-year, Obama-supporting incumbent back to Washington?
In the aftermath of the Small Wonder State’s colossal primary results, elites to the left and right wasted no time in trashing Christine O’Donnell and her supporters. “Objective” Fox Analyst Karl Rove – while failing to disclose the details of his interest in the Mike Castle campaign (a detail later revealed by the leader of Delaware’s 9/12 Project at O’Donnell’s victory party) – repeatedly rehashed old, tired and previously explained talking points concerning O’Donnell’s student loans, IRS liens and finances.
On the Special Report panel, Charles Krauthammer, apparently channeling his inner Charlie Gibson (minus the headmaster glasses), derided Delaware yokels and their enablers, Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint. Actually, he initially condemned only Palin until Brett Baier reminded him that O’Donnell had also been endorsed by the senate’s staunchest conservative from South Carolina.
Right of center blogs including National Review and The Weekly Standard joined in the game, also obviously unaware that the Tea Party locomotive had been roaring full-steam ahead toward principled conservatism (and mowing over the concept of “squishy moderation” in the process), while they were busy playing Beltway politics as usual.
So it was no surprise when O’Donnell’s righty detractors took the bait set by smug, arrogant and angry lefty blackmailer Bill Maher. Recalling that Delaware’s new Republican senatorial candidate had been a frequent guest on his show during the 1990s and early 2000s, the decidedly unlikeable Maher promptly threatened to release one video appearance after another until Christine O’Donnell (who’s politely declined up to this point) agreed to an interview.
And in a testament to his dismissal of conservative Christians as militant, unforgiving and perhaps sexually repressed stuffed-shirts, Maher released an old video in which the now 41 year-old O’Donnell had admitted to “dabbling in witchcraft” as a high school teenager. In the twitch of a nose, she “magically” transformed from puritanical freak with an anti-masturbation agenda to a handmaiden of the Devil.
Well, at least that was what he’d been hoping for.
But a funny thing happened on the road to socialism: Americans recognized the culpability of both parties in helping to bring the United States to the brink of collapse. Whether big-spending, “big tent” Rove Republicans who introduced the oxymoron “compassionate conservatism” to the electorate – along with a host of unconstitutional legislation and government expansion – or liberal Democrats who sold “hope and change” as a centrist platform only to ram onerous bills like Obamacare down their throats (polls and the will of the people be damned), voters declared a pox on both parties.
At the same time, they understood that the only place to find commonsense conservative candidates was in the GOP, and that these would-be citizen governors — much like the rest of us — are far from perfect. Thus, instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, the Tea Party movement organized and coalesced around the most conservative candidates they could identify in the primaries and – if said candidate prevailed, threw their support behind them in the general election. And in the state of Delaware, they rallied around the imperfect, but principled Christine O’Donnell – the only clear, conservative option in the race.
For years, conservatives have dutifully supported the moderate victor (McCain in 2008, Bush in 2000 & 2004, Dole in 1996, G.H.W. Bush in 1992) in spite of their misgivings – all in the name of party unity. Admonished by their GOP superiors (some of the same people who long ago ceded pop culture, media and public education to the left, to the detriment of American freedom) that the Reagan era was over, they’d hold their noses and vote for the guy with the “R” after his name, grudgingly reminding themselves that he was at least marginally better than the Democrat.
But now that the shift has taken place in reaction to the radical Obama agenda, now that the country is rediscovering its Founders and the principles they outlined in the watershed document known as the US Constitution, so-called pragmatic Republicans are refusing to return the courtesy.
In the case of O’Donnell, rather than adhering to the old axiom, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”, hypocrites like Karl Rove cannot stop attacking her – over a week after the election. Charles Krauthammer smugly advised Palin and DeMint to hit the stump in Delaware on O’Donnell’s behalf since they’re the ones who wanted her so badly. I suppose in Charles’ mind, Delaware primary voters are incapable of making their own decisions and thinking for themselves.
Tea Partiers, recognizing the chicanery from left and right, promptly responded by donating nearly $2 million (as of this writing) to O’Donnell’s campaign. Will she win? It’s definitely not out of the question. And even if she doesn’t, the message to the GOP is loud and clear: either reform or die as a party. Better an honest, avowed liberal than a back-stabbing, deal-making, power-hungry RINO.
It will undoubtedly take more than a few election cycles, along with a concerted effort to reeducate and redefine pop culture, before we get the country back to its intended framework of a Constitutional Republic. In the meantime, elites on both sides of the aisle are on notice to stop ‘misunderestimating’ the power and determination of ordinary Americans who’ve had enough.
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