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Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Delaware might be relatively easy for O'Donnell.

Establishment Washington got yet another whipping last night, as "the unelectable" Christine O'Donnell -- supported by Sarah Palin and the Tea Parties -- rallied to convincingly beat liberal and well-connected Mike Castle in Delaware's Republican primary for Senate. Castle, we were told by the powers that be, was the only electable Republican -- and his loss is already being mourned by "Beltway conservatives" like Karl Rove and Dana Perino, not to mention the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has announced that O'Donnell will have to finance her campaign on her own. [editor's note: in the light of day, the NRSC has announced it has given the maximum legal donation to the O'Donnell campaign, and Michael Steele has stated the party is behind her 100%]

Well, fine. The last time Republican voters agreed with the Beltway pundits (and the Democrats) and awarded a nomination to "the most electable Republican" who was "well-respected across the aisle," we got John McCain. How did that work out? Just great -- as long as you are a Democrat. (Continues here at American Thinker)

Thankfully, tiny Delaware's voters ignored their party apparatus, actually held a true Republican primary, and chose the person who most closely represents what the Republican base voter believes in. This is what party primaries used to be for. It is what they should still be held for. It is simply unforgivable for Republican apparatchiks to choose sides in a primary -- yet they do -- and they are so often disastrous picks. Can you say "Arlen Specter"? "Charlie Crist"?

So while there's no guarantee of success in November for O'Donnell, she joins a list of "unelectable Republicans" past and present like Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, Rand Paul, Scott Brown, Sharron Angle, Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio, to name a few. Their stories are varied, but all were deemed "unelectable" by the party insiders at some point in their careers, and they were all considered too conservative.

O'Donnell's story of last night was simply a continuation of their stories in this very unusual 2009-2010 election cycle.

All faced establishment candidates and long odds -- and yet all won by being unabashedly conservative. All read the tea leaves of the national mood much better than government insiders and political pros.

It is true that Angle, Paul, and Rubio have not won general elections yet -- but they have already disproven the "unelectable" myth by staging huge rallies in the polls that we were told could never happen by the experts and insiders. Brown and Christie (who campaigned for Castle) meanwhile have shown that strong small-government conservatives can win in blue-state bastions like Massachusetts and New Jersey after all, destroying yet another inside-the-Beltway myth.

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