This time TalkingPointsMemo documents the infighting:
For Republican candidates across the country, the movement du jour seems to be a pledge to repeal health care reform if elected. Republicans are rushing to co-sponsor and promote efforts to repeal the bill on Capitol Hill. But not everyone is biting, exposing another fissure between the GOP’s right and far-right.
The latest GOPers caught in the mix are in Delaware — with candidate Christine O’Donnell (R-DE) challenging Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) to sign on to repeal plans. Castle, like every single Congressional Republican, opposed the legislation. But he said that repealing “is not realistic.”
Even DelawarePolitics.net (in their capacity as unpaid PR arm of the Christine O’Donnell campaign) gets quoted from Christine’s press release:
But according to DelawarePolitics.net, O’Donnell charges that by not signing, Castle is “breaking faith with the people of Delaware and America in refusing to support the conservative-led effort to repeal ObamaCare, a totally disastrous and unconstitutional health bill.”
There’s more spats at the link, but one thing that TPM missed was that Castle made his decision to not repeal the Affordable Care Act conditional on Democrats still controlling government. Apparently he would be on board with rolling back a new regulatory regime on insurance companies as well as expanded coverage for Americans if Republicans were in charge.
Unfortunately for Christine, it is a safe bet that Mike Castle probably doesn’t even know she has issued this challenge to him — it seems a safe bet that given the messy way she seems to occupy the political space, Castle and his people (and the entire State R Party, I’d bet) have pretty much decided that they can safely ignore her.
(Thanks to Jason330 for the h/t!)