The Invincible Mike Castle
I know there are posters here that believe Mike Castle is unbeatable and that if he enters the Senate race, he’ll win. It may be true that Castle would win the race, but he will have to work for it and not rely on his name recognition and nice guy reputation. I believe that Mike Castle is being hurt by the unpopularity of Republicans and their agenda of no. Let’s look at some polling numbers:
The Public Policy Polling survey showed Castle leading Biden, the son of Vice President Joseph Biden, 44 percent to 36 percent. The automated survey of 782 Delaware voters was conducted March 5-8 and had a 3.5-point margin of error.
A Democratic polling firm had Castle leading by 8%.
A new Susquehanna Polling and Research poll in Delaware shows Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) soundly beating Attorney General Beau Biden (D) in a possible match up for U.S. Senate in 2010.
Castle leads Biden, 55% to 34% with only 8% undecided.
I think it’s very difficult to compare these two polls, but they did have Beau Biden at about the same number. I suspect Susquehanna pushed leaners harder. 21% is a big lead, however, and 55% is good for someone with the record and name-recognition of Mike Castle. The newest poll showed a lead by Castle of only 5% (47%-42%), and Castle below 50%. This poll was by a respected polling outfit, Rasmussen.
So let’s read the tea leaves here:
My reading of the tea leaves suggest that Castle is out and Biden is in.
Tags: Beau Biden, DE-Sen, Mike Castle
At his age the idea of taking on an energetic John Carney or Beau Biden must be terribly daunting. He’s been allowed to slide into the House for years, but to take on a really-oh, truly-oh statewide race, 16-hours-a-day-7-days-a-week? I just don’t see why he would want to. He sure doesn’t need the money. If he is the nice guy, moderate that he claims to be, he has to be disgusted with his party about now. Especially after the summer of spittle, with Bohner as his minority leader. Mike’s a gentleman of another era. He’s been dragging this out so the Delaware Republicans don’t go into full-fledged meltdown, but the time is coming. They can’t let John and Beau go out there and romp around with no opposition — can they?
The fact is the DE GOP is disgusted with him. Castle is about as untrustworthy a politician as I seen
since I’ve been paying attention to politics (for all of 9 years until about a month ago).
The whole time I’ve watched Castle he has been one of those d-bags who cloak their weasely poll watching ways in appeals to “moderation” and “bipartisanship.” Terms that really mean “constantly taking the public’s temperature while not appearing to have any core beliefs.” I know rank and file Republicans don’t like him for that and they hate that he is the best they can do.
I happen to think that the bigger reason for Republicans not to like him is that he has failed in his role of party leader. From my perspective his legacy is a pretty screwed up DE GOP. Who comes after him? Protac? O’Donnel? He didn’t even have the decency to provide Vicmead with a son.
When he takes a powder maybe the shallowest of shallow political benches will finally be noted in the pages of the News Journal. I will not be holding my breath waiting for that though.