I think my favorite Castle series was the one that showed how Mike Castle paid back a couple of large agra-businesses for $100 k in campaign donations with 103 tariff suspension bills. Basically, tax cuts that ended up costing the treasury at least $120,000,000 in lost tariff revenue.

Who Does Castle Really Work For? Part I

Who Does Castle Really Work For? Part II

I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but it struck me as a bit odd that Castle introduced so many bills to help out the very narrow constituency of benzene-sulfonamide importers.

Who Does Castle Really Work For? Part III

With the help of a bunch of commenters, I worked out who was paying Castle and what a fantastic deal they were getting.

Who Does Castle Really Work For? Part IIIb

The bills were so narrowly written that it was obvious that a “quid pro quo” existed, so I started asking peskier questions:

Clearly, someone had to ask the Congressman to propose these pieces of legislation. Who at DuPont and Syngenta contacted Castle about the legislation? Did the companies volunteer the campaign contributions —or were they shaken down? Did Castle solicit these contributions directly? Or did someone on Castle’’s staff do the dirty work?

Perhaps, our Congressman and the companies involved would be willing to voluntarily disclose all of the e-mails and other communications regarding those bills and contributions, so we can understand how Castle came to sponsor these measures. (HA!!! I kill myself.)

No. I don’t think Castle and the chemical companies are going to come clean voluntarily. Maybe our crusading U.S. Attorney, Colm Connolly always concerned about public corruption could issue a subpoena and get to the bottom of this.

Who Does Castle Really Work For? Part IV

I got to the end of the string and as it turns out, there is an office in the government that works out the economic impact of tax cuts and industry earmarks like the ones Castle was pushing through.

Based on our own government’s estimates, just these 18 of Mike Castle’s tariff suspension bills would cost the US Treasury over $21,000,000 in lost tariff revenue. I know this is a rough extrapolation, but if you take the average lost tariff revenue of these 18 ($1,166,666) and multiply that by the 103 bills like this Mike Castle has sponsored, it appears Mike Castle has provided over $120,000,000 of benefit to his chemical industry contributors. To see one of these Commission memos on one of Mike Castle’s bills, click here.

Epilogue: Tom Carper was also implicated because he was working the Senate side of this corporate welfare scheme, so there was no real appetite anywhere to expose this scam to a wider audience. The News Journal ran a little, “nothing to see here folks” article and that was that.

I know this series played no part what-so-ever in Castle’s downfall, but for a moment it was kind of nice to glimpse the big picture and think that malefactors in high places could be caught. Perhaps they can. If not by cops, by karma.

A stellar performance by Chris Coons.

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I got an email from Delawarean in exile:

Hey. So I see Delaware is making some news today.

I just have to share my observation on last night. There was a brief moment on CNN right after they put the check mark next to O’Donnell’s name when the camera was fixed on the podium at her HQ, while Jessica Yellin was…well… yellin’ to be heard. I am convinced that none of them knew that anybody outside of the room could see them. There were all of these goofy superiority dances, failed attempts at organized cheer leading, etc. My favorite moment was when one guy gripped his plastic cup in his teeth while he pulled his pants up. (we’ve all seen that maneuver before, but usually at a tailgate.) It was magical. And then, suddenly, someone must have noticed that they were being seen live by everyone watching CNN. They all got pushed off stage, so that a preselected “representative sample of Delaware tax payers” could assume their backdrop positions.

For one brief moment, there was a glimpse of reality on the T.V. I am sure that the O’Donnell folks won’t let it happen again.

Back in my blogging days I might have written something like this:

Prediction: Fox News runs 7 straight weeks of investigative stories documenting the facts of Chris Coons’ record; that he is more evil than Hitler, more brutal than Stalin, more committed to global socialism than Che Guevara, and two times scarier than Malcolm X and Malcolm-Jamal Warner put together.

I wouldn’t write that now.

And I think it is a lesson to be learned for Chris Coons. From Hotline:

In the wake of Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s upset defeat in Alaska to a little-known Tea Partier last month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Delaware Republican party made a conscious decision to go nuclear on O’Donnell – an understandable one, given the immense amount of personal baggage that was well-documented in the local press and Weekly Standard.

Delaware Republican party chairman Tom Ross publicly proclaimed she was downright unelectable, saying couldn’t even win an election for dogcatcher in the state. NRSC Chairman John Cornyn told CNN, on the day of the election, that he had serious doubts about O’Donnell. All that negativity had an impact, but it may well have backfired.

Delaware is not Alaska, and Rep. Mike Castle isn’t Murkowski. Delaware is a state that has the unusual post-election tradition of “Return Day” where politicians of both parties meet together to bury the hatchet. Pundits interpreted O’Donnell’s conservative ideology as inconsistent with Delaware’s milquetoast political culture – very true – but it was Castle and the GOP establishment’s decision to throw the opposition research book at O’Donnell that was even more out of touch with the state’s non-confrontational environment.

Bingo. The Delaware Way strikes again, and it benefitted the candidate that no one ever could conceive of benefitting. O’Donnell was airing negative attacks at Castle, sure. But the reality of Mike Castle, the all around “Mr. Nice Guy,” the beloved “Delaware’s Best,” Mike the Moderate, clashed irredeemably with his name attached to the myriad negative ads he ran. Mike Castle hasn’t run a negative campaign since… well, not in my adult memory. I hear he called his opponent a liar in the 1970’s. Forty freaking years ago. And Mike Castle hasn’t really needed to run a negative campaign. He has not had a competitve campaign, either in the general election or in the GOP primary, in 18 years. In fact, that is why we were all excited for this race, because finally Mike Castle would face some questions about his record in a competitive race.

Because Mike Castle has coasted to victory on his name brand for the entirety of his Congressional career. And, suprisingly, the first thing he did when saw a threat was to go devastatingly negative. And that destroyed his brand, and forced actual conservative voters (not the O’Donnell thugs) to actually look at the record and the man. And they did not like what they saw. (A side note, I am now convinced Mike Castle would have lost to any Democrat, Coons or Biden, for if his first reaction was to go that negative on O’Donnell, he surely would have gone negative on Biden or Coons).

Hotline looked at the NRSC’s record in fighting off Teabagger candidates, and they have failed spectactularly because they have always gone horribly and very publically negative against the rebel candidates. But the NRCC, the House counterpart, has been successful in defending their establishment candidates, because it has done so behind the scenes and quietly.

So the lesson for Coons is: don’t go negative on the personal issues. Forget about the lack of education. Forget about the foreclosures and history of bad debts. Forget about her lenghty history of lying.

Contrast on the substantive issues (and there is plenty to use there, for O’Donnell is a radical creationist freak intend on installing a fundamentalist agenda on Delaware).

The lesson for the DSCC: send your money, but stay away.

Coons will win this election easily, if he keeps his nose to the ground, addressing voter concerns and their issues. The Delaware Way awards that.

From a Commenter at Gawker:

All I can make of this is…someone didn’t follow the rules and got Palin wet and now we’ve got all these little fucked up Stripes running around spewing nonsense and threatening to shoot the GOP in the face at the bar.

So how did this happen? There are two answers to the question, depending on what you mean by the question.

First, the votes. Where did Christine win?

O’Donnell won 12,369 votes in New Castle County, 6,151 in Kent and 12,041 in Sussex, for a total of 30,561 and 2-1 wins in Kent and Sussex County over Castle. Meanwhile, Castle beat O’Donnell by 4,500 votes in New Castle County, garnering 16,891 votes, 3,518 votes in Kent and 6,612 votes in Sussex, for a statewide total of 27,021. So what happened is what we all knew could happen, and Christine’s only path to victory: “Run up the score in Kent and Sussex and lose closely in New Castle County (or at least avoid having Castle run up a huge score).

So that is the technical how. For Republicans hungover today (from either joy or mourning), a different path to victory will be required for Christine, as there are nearly more Democrats in New Castle County then there are total voters (Republicans and Democrats and Independents) in Kent and Sussex County.

The philosophical how is a different question. Allan Loudell touches on the answer:

But the other significant factor which has been lost in much of the national media coverage: Today’s Delaware Republican Party – and I’m referring here to rank-and-file voters – is vastly different from the Delaware G.O.P. of a decade or certainly two decades ago. Rather like a comet shedding its very essence as it nears the sun, the upstate Delaware G.O.P. has been shedding voters, who have re-registered as independents, or took the plunge to register as “D’s”. To be sure, some Delaware Republicans have re-registered Democrat only to vote in a particular election. This happened in 2008, when a contingent of upstate Republicans shifted to the D’s to vote in the Democratic Presidential and Gubernatorial primaries, particularly for Jack Markell. You can bet many INTENDED to swing back to the G.O.P., but never got around to it.

Delaware Republicans for generations were of the Northeast variety, such as Nelson Rockefeller and former Delaware GOP Governor Russell Peterson. They were moderates, but were called “liberal” Republicans. Indeed, Peterson, a dedicated environmentalist, is not a Republican anymore. He is a Democrat. That is not an isolated event. The parties have realigned. The Democrats used to have many conservatives within the party, especially in the South (both nationally and locally), but the events of the 1960’s and the Civil Rights Movement changed that real quick. And now, the events of the 1990’s and the 21st Century are driving moderates and liberals away from their old Republican Party, sometimes screaming, as in last night.

Sure, some Republicans may have switched over their registration to become Democrats in 2008 so they could create a little mischef, or perhaps some were geniunely wanting to vote for Markell in his primary against Carney. If these Republicans had the former motivation, to create some mischef, then they probably are heavily engaged in politics and would have switched right back to being Republicans as soon as possible. Indeed, I was telling someone last night that I don’t think I could ever register as a Republican, as I would automatically feel unclean and soulless, and that if I should die as a Republican I would go directly to Hell; but … if I did register as a Rethug, I would change that registration so fast after that primary that I would be waiting at the Elaine Manlove’s door the next morning.

So what we are really talking about is Republicans who have the latter motivation, in that they switched to vote for Markell for geniune reasons. If that is the case, they are most likely Castle voters. So yes, that contributed to Castle’s loss. But this contribution is a symptom of the larger problem that reduced the Grand Ole Party to the state it is in today, where it will be three or four generations before it will be able to complete for state wide offices.

Moderates are not welcome in the Republican party any more. The Teabaggers themselves will tell you that. In fact, the Teabaggers want to literally kill all moderate Republicans (see the death threats against Ross et al). And this is not a new thing. For years now, moderates have become fewer and far between in the GOP.

So how did this happen?

It happened because the Republican Party has become so conservative and so extreme that reasonable moderates and even some sane conservatives no longer feel comfortable having an (R) after their name anymore. It happened because the DE GOP has not matured as it got older. It has devolved. It is a shell of its former self, and that was in 2008, when Bill Lee had to be dragged home from a Florida vacation just so that the party could have a candidate for Governor. It is actually worse now. O’Donnell is now the nominee, and four years ago, she finished third…. BEHIND MIKE PORNSTACHE PROTACK!!!

Does this sound like a party has is growing its tent and reaching out to more voters?

No. It is a party that is being distilled down to the very pure conservative ideological fringe.

Radicals like Frank Knotts and David Anderson and Angel over at Delaware Politics are happy today. They won’t be for much longer. They have won the battle for the soul of the Republican Party, but it is a pyrrhic victory.

Alas, we don’t have Jamaican resident and heiress Michele Rollins to kick around anymore. She has conceded to Urquhart.