Centerville GOP Mocks O’Donnell Threat – Castle No Reaction to O’Donnell Surge
If you were waiting for a local news outfit to get a reaction from Mike Castle regarding Christine O’Donnell’s suddenly aggressive and energetic campaign, you might be waiting a while.
This is the best Politico’s David Cantanese could get out of Silent Mike:
“A Castle campaign spokeswoman did not return a request for comment.”
And yet…the DE GOP has some words for O’Donnell, and those words are…”Yeah, right..and Whatever”
Delaware’s state GOP chairman dismissed O’Donnell as a perennial candidate overburdened with baggage who is completely unelectable.
“She has debts she hasn’t paid from the last race. She sold her house that was in foreclosure so she could run for Senate. She has a long history of not paying bills. She sued a conservative think tank that dismissed her. She’s a candidate who runs for office that unfortunately lives off the proceeds. You just don’t have a candidate in Christine O’Donnell that is considered credible. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a candidate with such a paper trail,” said state party chair Tom Ross.
So the party line is that O’Donnell is a joke. I’m sure they are trying to let Sarah Palin in on that information about now.
LOL, we both pulled the same thing out of that Politico article. As much as I’d love it if O’Donnell made it a race I just can’t imagine it happening. She was creamed at the state GOP convention which should be the activist base of the state.
She may be a nut. But for the first time, she’ll be a nut with lotsa $$’s, and the people giving those $$’s know how to rouse the Teabagger base to come out (Sherron Angle, Rand Paul). And only highly-motivated people vote in primaries. And lots of them avoid paying taxes and certainly don’t give a bleep about what some party chair might say.
I simply cannot exaggerate how much fun this is gonna be. I am practically…giddy!
How many Castle voters are accustomed to rousing themselves to vote in a primary? Between them, O’Donnell and Protack pulled a little over 7,000 votes in a blue year when they both opposed Ting. You have to think she can more than double that in a red tide year, no? Can Castle movtivate 15,000 Greenville-Centreville-Brandywine Hundred Republicans to vote? How much money and effort will he have to expend doing it?
John Tobin told me that he was going to look at those numbers. Since O’Donnell looks set to run a mean spirited campaign of personal destruction against Castle, even if she loses, she can hurt him in November.
I look forward to seeing Tobin’s analysis. I think Geezer brings up an important point – yes, Castle is popular but is he popular enough to bring out primary supporters? There is a primary race for U.S. Rep so perhaps that will up the R turnout. However, he’s running on a Castle/Rollins pairing. How will that stack up with an O’Donnell/Urquhart pairing in terms of passion?
I, too, look forward to John Tobin’s take. Until then, a couple of points:
I think Urquhart is trying to ride O’Donnell’s coattails, rather than the other way around. She has better name recognition than he.
Those who claim defeating Castle is impossible for O’Donnell have a strong point but little hard evidence to back it up. Anyone can look up the district-by-district vote totals for primaries for the past several cycles. The 2006 results are particularly interesting. That was the 3-way Ting-Protack-O’Donnell race, which Ting won with 43%. The “true conservative” vote was therefore 57% (and exceeded 8,000 total votes, not 7,000 as I posted somewhere earlier). Ting was first choice in most upstate districts but rarely got to 50% (I’m basing this on a quick read). In downstate districts, Protack finished ahead of him frequently. [A caveat: Jan Ting is Asian-American, and downstate conservatives might have been particularly reluctant to vote for him because of that.]
There is no Mike Castle “machine.” He has triumphed on the backs of moderate Democratic voters for so long that he hasn’t even bothered to cut new campaign ads; he just runs the same old ads he cut years ago (cue banjo music). And whatever he cranks up between now and September is going to be done on the fly, because until two weeks ago they thought they had this in the bag. Who’s going to go door-knocking for him come September?
2006 is a good guide because it was a mid-term. So 15,000 maybe 16,000 votes will be cast? O’Donnell basically just needs to hold into the O’Donnell/Protack vote to make it a long night for Castle.
If 57% of Republican electorate in Delaware is strong conservative why didn’t O’Donnell get more support at the Republican convention?
If Castle was really worried about O’Donnell his best bet was to get a third candidate in the primary. If Geezer’s numbers are right O’Donnell + money could win the day over Castle.
Good question about the convention turnout. What percentage of primary voters go to the convention? 2% ? That may be an overestimate. I would say that the lunatic O’Donnell/Protack types probably think that they are not “in the club” or that the results are wired in favor of he Greenville anointed candidates – but that would be pure speculation.
Castle’s probably pissed he didn’t stay in the House. That way both he and Carney could sleep their way till November.
You may be right that the Country Club Republicans are overrepresented at the convention, but normally convention-goers are much more conservative than the base.
Just a hunch, but most of those who vote at the convention (and I think they have to be actual delegates to be allowed to vote) know where their bread is buttered — Greenville/Centreville, to be precise. The unwashed masses who listen to WGOD and gnash their teeth for foetus-Americans aren’t well represented. In 2006, Ting got an overwhelming endorsement at the convention, and 43% of the primary vote.
UI: All the sorts who could have presented a third option have joined the race for Congress, where Michelle Rollins might get her head handed to her in the primary. Kevin Wade has dropped out and Rose Izzo couldn’t draw flies if she rolled in horse manure and walked around the State Fair, leaving Glen “Why Are Liberals Nazis?” Urquhart to reap all the anti-establishment anger.
If Castle is worried, Rollins ought to make plans to spend November in Jamaica, because she has most of his negatives and none of his name recognition or strengths.
Here’s another bit of evidence in support of the wingnuts-own-the-primary meme: In 2008, John “Son of” Clatworthy, the won the three-way primary to replace Charlie Copeland in the 4th Senatorial, the safest GOP seat north of Dover, with 47% of the vote. (Now that I look it up, it’s actually the safest Republican Senate seat in the state — it’s the only one with more registered Rs than Ds.) Voter turnout was roughly the same as it was statewide for Republicans, 16%. Yet the district as a whole broke for the Democrat, Dr. Michael Katz, in the general.
Which also goes to show, if the wingnuts win in September, how dismal their chances will be in November.
Why do we always focus on the candidates’ weak points? I, for one, immensely enjoy her soliloquies on masturbation.
I like her talks about centaur like human/animal genetic hybrids.
I really think Rollins is in real trouble. The GOP has been trying for years to get her to run, but she never took the plunge, so there’s not much fire in her belly. I wonder if leadership didn’t put her up to this so the wingnut wing wouldn’t waltz to an unopposed slot on the November ballot, and she signed on thinking this would be easy.
The GOP peasants are in revolt, and they’re marching on the castle with their torches and pitchforks. Reminds me that Mike Castle used to dress up for the Newark Halloween parade as Frankenstein’s monster.
The Centerville GOP has a history of flattering people into running then leaving them in the cold. Rollins should have had a long talk with Jan Ting prior to acquiescing.
“The GOP peasants are in revolt, and they’re marching on the castle with their torches and pitchforks” Poor Protack. Bad timing.
I was beat incomplete
I’d been had, I was sad and blue
But you made me feel
Yeah, you made me feel
shiny and new
All together now