Mike Castle’s TV Ads

If you live in New Castle County, you have probably seen Mike Castle’s campaign commercials.   They continue the standard Mike Castle message: “Given all of the problems our country faces, we have to send people to Washington that are willing to work together.”

The ad reinforces the central idea that most Delawareans have about Mike Castle: that he is a moderate who crosses the aisle to solve our country’s problems.    Even though that notion is not true.    The Washington Post reports that Mike Castle votes with his Republican Party (and presumably with President Bush) 81.4% of the time.   That sounds like a tried and true party loyalist to me.  That sounds like an inflexible partisan unwilling to cross the aisle to work with Democrats to solve our country’s problems.

Now, considering the fact that he has been in Washington for sixteen years, and given the fact that our country has not had its problems solved in that time span, Delawareans must ask why he has failed to work together with Democrats to solve our country’s problems.   Mike Castle says that we must send people to Washington willing to work together.  So that begs the question, why hasn’t he been willing to work together with those with opposing views from him?  Why does he vote in lockstep with the Republican Party over 80% of the time?

But Delawareans will not ask those questions.  Not when all they see on TV and in the News Journal reinforces the notion that Mike Castle is a centrist who seeks to work together with those on the other side.  Not when they see Senator Carper make joint appearance after joint appearance with Castle, announcing new projects for Delaware.

We now know why Mike Castle was amassing a huge campaign war chest earlier this year, when his three Democratic challenger were raising pennies by comparison.  We wondered then if it was not a signal that he intended to run for the Senate in 2010 or 2012, for surely he did not need all that money to get reelected to the House.   But the truth is, he does.   He needs to be in complete control of the debate on television, on radio and in the newspapers in order for the impression of him as a mavericky centrist to survive.

And right now, he is in complete control, the truth about his record of working together with those who disagree with him be damned.