Arlen Specter's Revenge Finally, a Republican civil war!
SEPTEMBER 14, 2010.
By JAMES TARANTO
When Sen. Arlen Specter (R2D2, Pa.) became a Democrat in April 2009, we argued that "the GOP would have been far better off had it persuaded him to remain in the fold." We faulted conservative stalwart Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina for saying, in effect: Good riddance. We saw Specter's switch in isolation and did not imagine it was the start of a trend. We were wrong.
Specter, who leans left but is steadfast in defense of whatever he finds expedient for as long as he finds it expedient, faced a challenge that at the time was unique to him. In 2004, he had nearly been defeated in the Republican primary by conservative ex-Rep. Pat Toomey. Toomey promised a 2010 rematch, and Specter, having voted for President Obama's $787 squillion so-called stimulus bill, faced near-certain defeat.
Instead, he opted for uncertain defeat, to which he went down in the Democratic primary. In this age of partisan polarization, Republicans and Democrats found something on which they could agree: Arlen Specter does not belong in the Senate.
Toomey, who ran unopposed in the primary, is now heavily favored to win the seat in November. Meanwhile, similar scenarios emerged in six other Senate races, as establishment favorites lost the GOP nomination to more conservative challengers:
In Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist followed Specter's lead and left his party when it became clear he would lose the Senate primary to Marco Rubio, a former speaker of the state House. In Alaska and Utah, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Bob Bennett fell to Tea Party candidates. In Colorado and Nevada, conservative candidates won primaries to take on incumbent Democratic senators. And in Kentucky, libertarian ophthalmologist Rand Paul trounced the favored candidate of the state's senior senator, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
A liberal media narrative developed: Republicans were hopelessly divided, riven by a "civil war." Worse, the "far right"--those crazy Tea Party guys!--was winning, so that the GOP was nominating fringe candidates who couldn't win.
How's that working out? According to FiveThirtyEight.com, now a division of the New York Times, the GOP candidate is favored in every one of those states except Nevada, where Sharron Angle is only a slight underdog against Harry Reid, the sad clown of a Senate majority leader.
But the media are getting their civil war after all, albeit on a very small scale. Today all eyes are on diminutive Delaware, one of the last states to hold primaries. At stake is the Republican nomination for a special election to the Senate seat formerly held by Vice President Biden. Rep. Mike Castle, a moderate-to-liberal Republican who has won a dozen statewide elections, was expected to win easily. But he's facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from eccentric young conservative Christine O'Donnell, who has the endorsements of conservative kingmakers DeMint and Sarah Palin.
Not only is the GOP divided--which, now that you mention it, is true by definition of any party facing a contested primary--but so are conservative pundits. The Wall Street Journal editorial board, of which this columnist is a member, made the pragmatic case for Castle, observing that "sometimes you need a few 'wets' to gain a majority and advance your own ideas." At National Review, the same sentiment prevails. The Weekly Standard has investigated O'Donnell's odd personal history, including a lawsuit for "gender discrimination" that she filed against a former employer, the Wilmington-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute, but later dropped.
On the other side, The American Spectator's website last week published an overwrought piece by Jeffrey Lord, a former Reagan White House political director, titled "The Ruling Class Hits Christine O'Donnell." (The term "ruling class" comes from an earlier Spectator essay by Angelo Codevilla.) Lord writes:
For the Ruling Class, as Codevilla baldly points out, the true objective is always about nothing more or less than power for the "in crowd." Power simply for the sake of power.
And whatever else Christine O'Donnell has done in her life, being part of that "in crowd" has never been high on her list. If she's elected, she may well be one wrecking ball of a senator--totally willing to not be part of the Ruling Class club. The prospect of a "Senator O'Donnell" utterly terrifies the Delaware Ruling Class. Not to mention some Ruling Class members who've never set foot in the state.
That, when you really get down to it, is what this election is really all about.
Buckle in.
There are a lot more of these Ruling Class versus Country Class elections to come.
Actually, what the election is about is choosing a Senate nominee between two candidates, each of whom has some serious flaws. As NR's editor, Rich Lowry, writes:
What many O'Donnell supporters are implicitly arguing is that there can be no standards in evaluating candidates beyond an ideological litmus test--a deeply unconservative sentiment. The likes of Jim DeMint have pushed the envelope of the possible this year in red states where a Republican is almost guaranteed election and have succeeded marvelously. I guess it's only natural that they would, in light of those successes, reach for one more, even more audacious, anti-establishment win.
Delaware is a much less conservative state than Alaska or Utah, or even Nevada or Pennsylvania. FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver rates Castle's likelihood of defeating Democrat Chris Coons (who is running unopposed) at nearly 95%, O'Donnell's at 17%. From a conservative standpoint, those odds favor Castle, whose unreliable vote would surely be preferable to a Coons's reliably liberal one.
"I'd rather have 30 Marco Rubios in the Senate than 60 Arlen Specters," Sen. DeMint said in February. As we acknowledged above, DeMint was right about Specter last year: 60 Arlen Specters would be 60, not 59, too many. DeMint's effort to nominate more conservative candidates has proved its worth. But if Christine O'Donnell wins the nomination and loses in November, it will have exceeded its worth.
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