GOP Eats Young, Encourages Democratic Turnout
GOP Eats Young, Encourages Democratic Turnout
Written by Rev. Robert A. Vinciguerra Sunday, 19 September 2010 00:05
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The 2010 election cycle has been a strange one. In early 2009 it seemed like the Democrats couldn’t lose. Obama’s approval numbers were untouchable, the liberal agenda was going to be easily passed thanks to vast majorities in both the House and the Senate, it seemed as if Democrats would pick up three to four seats in the Senate, and the idea of losing the House was unthinkable.
It only took Republicans and their allies a few months to regroup. Through their largest PR firm, Fox News, they organized Tea Parties, cast hatred towards the President by spreading rumors that he’s not an American, that he’s a Muslim, and that he’s the black offspring of Stalin, Hitler, and Marx.
But the GOP may have pushed too hard, and got too many crazy people fired up. The extreme fanatic right have bucked the Republican Party’s control over a number of elections, and in the place of party favorites, they’ve installed their own candidates.
In places like Utah and Alaska, where Tea Party activists have defeated mainstream Republicans, there are so few Democrats that even if Thomas Jefferson were resurrected and placed on the ballot he’d be defeated by 20 points or more.
Even in Kentucky, where the Democratic Party enjoys a large voter registration advantage, it’s unlikely that Rand Paul, the Tea Partier son of libertarian Ron Paul who would repeal certain equal rights legislation, will be defeated.
In Florida the far right pushed popular governor Charlie Crist out of the GOP and into a third party bid in favor of the charismatic conservative Marko Rubio. Rubio’s up in the polls, but don’t count Crist out.
Angle and O'Donnell
However, there are two races that are beginning to shape national opinion of the Tea Party movement, which are the senate races in Nevada and Delaware.
In Nevada, the Tea Party defeated establishment candidates to nomi nate Sharron Angle, who has been filmed comically running away from reporters, has called for the end to the US Department of Education, and a withdraw from the United Nations.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, extremely unpopular in his own state, would surely have been defeated by any qualified candidate, but thanks to the radical fringe right, he’s going to get six more years in the Senate.
The big story, however, is Delaware, where the race is to fill the seat of Vice President Joe Biden. When Biden vacated the seat he wanted it to go to is son, Beau Biden, who is the state’s attorney general. Unfortunately, Beau was serving in Iraq at the time, so Biden persuaded the governor to appoint long time advisor Ted Kaufman as a place holder. Kaufman, a loyal ally to Biden, agreed to not seek a full term so that Beau could run for his father’s seat.
But Beau Biden never became a candidate. Mike Castle, the Republican congressman who represents Delaware’s at-large district, jumped into the race. Castle had been governor and represented his state in Congress for 17 years. He was considered unbeatable. As 2010 increasingly shaped up to be a Republican year, Beau decided not to run against him.
Democrats instead nominated New Castle City Councilman Chris Coons, a virtual unknown to the public. Coons had no chance against Castle. Despite the deep blue color of the state, every single poll had Coons losing by double digits.
All of that instantly changed after the September 14th primary when Republican voters, spurred on by Tea Party wins elsewhere in the county, gave Mike Castle a pink slip and nominated lunatic Christine O'Donnell instead. She’s slightly further to the right than the Kremlin. Her win instantly alienated Delaware voters, propelling Coons’ campaign, once a lost cause, to a certain victory.
O'Donnell’s Candidacy Has National Implications
The difference between O'Donnell and Tea Party candidates elsewhere in the country is that she’s young, like Sarah Palin she’s attractive so the media is eager to put her face everywhere that it can, and she’s going down to assured defeat in a race where her own party did everything they could to defeat her.
Christine O'Donnell comes across as crazy. She once participated in an anti-masturbation campaign on MTV which has recently been aired on numerous TV networks and is widely available on the World Wide Web.
She’s a fundamentalist Christian who doesn’t believe in evolution and wants creationism taught in public schools. However, on an episode of Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect she talked about how she dabbled in witchcraft, which leads one to assume that she actually believes in the practice.
O'Donnell would raise the age to receive social security benefits and opposes embryonic stem cell research, two very unpopular positions for a politician to take in almost any state, especially one so left leaning.
The woman also doesn’t seem to fully understand the workings of the world around her. In 2007 on The O’Reilly Factor she said, and I’m not making this up, “American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.” She actually believes that there are mice in existence with the brains and minds of human beings. Of course, host Bill O’Reilly did nothing to correct her. Perhaps they’ve both been watching too many cartoons.
Delaware is one of the smallest states in both size and population. But in less than a week, the neuroticism, inexperience, and unprofessionalism of Christine O'Donnell has begun to define the Tea Party movement, which in itself has come to define the Republican Party.
Without meaning to, O'Donnell will come to the aid democrats in close races all over the country. As disheartened democratic voters learn more about the kind of extremists and novices who are about to take over the government, they become more enthusiastic about going to the polls, they become more likely to vote, and they’re going to bring their friends and family with them.
For the Republican Party to do extremely well in the 2010 election, they need democrats to stay home on November 2nd. Unfortunately for them, their own candidates are becoming the biggest cheerleaders for democratic turnout.