PoliticsUSA: Primary Elections Part 2: Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Wisconsin

The first newshorse to which I have had reference on this story today (two days after the primaries as we get set for the general election) was an item offered up by Reuters via Yahoo! News, written by an ideologue unconcerned in executing his slant in his articles, John Whitesides, "Republicans take stock after Tea Party stunner" (Sept9,2k10). The article is not overall about Republicans taking stock; it's about Democrat leaders' opinions about Christine O'Donnell's displacing the aged Reblcn Establishment's hold on Delaware's politics. In response to this distortion of a news reporter's function, Rep. Michael Castle shoud have ret+red, he's long been plodding and drifting into incompetence. Why do these power-mongers think they deserve more than 18 yrs as the people's representataives?, automatically moving from drudgery in the House to seniority in the Senate. No one in Congress (House or Senate) that long, can stay in touch with the populace that in the first instance it's his/her duty to represent. O'Donnel did a service to the Republic by knocking out of office her party's forever man (one of them).

For Whitesides and his article-editors Cynthia Osterman and Paul Simao, the campaign was about moderates vs extremists. The "reporter" obviously has the Republicans in the center of his targetting, altho he makes a ploy toward "evenhandedness" when he says both Dems and Rpblcns are threatened by extremists (but he doesn't document the Democrat "extremists," who not only dominate their party, but control the country). But, more important, is Whiteside's failure to define his terms: what is an "extremist" in the script he follows?

What's the meaning of Whiteside's reportage that Democratic anti-Republican arguments

bolstered ... [the idea] that the Republican Party has been taken over by extremists, giving [the Dems] hope moderates and independent voters who are sour on Democrats will not find Republicans to be a suitable alternative in November.

Fat chance! But the normative formulation of the issue is not "extremists" in either party. It's the positive advocacy of lower taxes, lower spending, and ....

The author goes on with his haphazard thesis by stating "Republicans had proven they did not have room for anyone who does not conform to their narrow agenda." That's a spurious brain-dead summation of what Democrats are thinking. If you're a liberal Republican in a liberal state, you still can can run in the Republican Party, altho you'd better be a millionaire, as is also the case in the Democratic Party. What's changed is that Republican conservatives and some Republican moderates are aiming toward "lower taxes and spending [hence smaller govt]," and I m+t add, paying down the sovereign national debt [hence solvency].

One can't blame Whitesides for exploiting Karl Rove's self-serving exploitation on TV (Fox News -- I saw the Rove performance "as it happened"), Rove's exploitation of his party's new candidate for the Senate in Delaware. I cringed as he tried to throw filth on Christine because she's a politically ambitious pauper, just paying down some of her debts now. She ran twice before, the most recent was a campaign to kick Joe Biden's then-held Senate seat, she garnering 35% on that trial run. She paupered herself in the three campaigns, old debts dragging on, while she worked as a conservative Rpblcn activist. The basis of her creds. In contrast, all these overwrawt rich guys (like Rove, like the Republican Paladino in New York, like Schumer on 'Crat side in NY), these guys can always finance their own political projects, they may to a man despise someone like Christine who's clawed her way onto the political scene without a dime. Only a political vision. California's Tea Party Express to the rescue! I guess she figures that, so what I've been broke until now. I have ideals, and I can get an interesting well-paying job to advance those ideals -- lower taxes, lower spending, and again I add, paying down the debt. That such a woman shoud ret+r the old geezer Castle without him getting even one term in the Senate, Karl Rove can't stand it! He's revealed his own elitist side, his age cohort and his Old Boys connections in the Republican Party -- he really doesn't want a new, younger generation, especially a younger woman, taking leadership among Republicans.

If the Dems can return on old lecher like Rangle to Congress (he won his 'Crat primary), then a young lady who sacrificed a lot to pursue conservative political action, she can hold her own against the Dem Senate candidate in Delaware, another rich guy. Not everyone in the Senate has to be a patrician, independently wealthy, bloated with noblesse oblige.

But, in any case, half the country hates Rove because he was Chief of Staff to Prez Bush the Younger. I supported him all thru his ordeal under the cloud of accusations Valerie Plame sent his way. Amazingly, his conventional wisdom no longer has the salt many once credited him with. A stale mind cawt in his own establishmentarian predilections when it comes to his own Party.

Further reports ...

"Christine O'Donnell: The GOP establishment's new BFF> Peter Grier, Christian Science Monitor (Sept16,2k10). "Christine O'Donnell was a surprise win in Delaware's GOP Senate primary. Now, Republicans from all over are rushing to close ranks and support her." Whitesides' tendentious myopia is is exposed, Rove's presumptuous snottiness is shot asunder.

While another source puts the gears to the Whiteside hypothesis:

"Coud Christine O'Donnell actually win in November?" (Linda Feldman, CSM, Sept16,2000).

In a CNN interview the day before Tuesday's primary, O’Donnell spoke positively of Clinton “in the context of female solidarity and empowerment,” Loudell writes. “A deft move.”

The tea party movement boasts many h+-profile women, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) of Minnesota, and Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle. And even though the GOP boasts fewer female candidates for congressional and gubernatorial seats than the Democrats, the imbalance is smaller than usual, and so 2010 has the feel of a “GOP Year of the Woman.” Ms. Angle’s continuing competitiveness against Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada, even after being ridiculed nationally for her unorthodox views, provides more evidence that O’Donnell cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Next time in this series on the Primaries, I'll take up the Primary Election in New York state which, in the case of the Republicans, saw the defeat of politician Rick Lazio (formerly a Congressman from the Staten Island district), and the win of independently-wealthy businessman . The Dems anointed the dynast Andrew Cuomo who was Attorney General for the state, in his last round. I have as little patience with the chauvinists like Rove when they put down the "integrity" and "morals" of a woman, nor very patient with geezers like Castle who hang around too long, nor patient with the dynasts like the second round of Cuomos, or the Kennedys, or the Bushes, or ....