The NJ had an article in Tuesday’s paper with this misleading title: Republicans wait as O’Donnell weighs another campaign. That title gives you the impression that there is something weighty and momentous going on here — that party leadership is somehow deferring to their local wingnut welfare grifter to give her first shot at running for the U.S. Senate against Chris Coons.
If you dig into the article, though, you can see the impatience of the local GOP with this stunt. Greg Lavelle wants her to make up her mind and get on with whatever she is going to do (and he is right, decisions do need to be made now and even now might be too late given the GOP disarray) and Dan Short thinks that O’Donnell is a contributing factor to the GOP decline in fortunes here. Charlie Copeland makes reassuring noises about being neutral here, but does point out that she’s been a 3-time loser on a pretty big scale. Only Steve Grossman wants you to know that the teajhadis want her to run. Does Steve even know that (according to Don Ayotte) the former true believers are now IPoDers who will be dominating the political landscape Any.Minute.Now.
For her part, O’Donnell isn’t committing yet:
At a special GOP convention Saturday to elect Charles L. Copeland state chair, O’Donnell said she did not know when she would make a decision about a campaign. She referenced persistent tension within the party, strife that was evident in 2010 when grassroots conservatives from southern Delaware feuded with moderate northern Republicans over her primary campaign against then-U.S. Rep. Mike Castle.
“We have to rebuild the foundation in the party,” O’Donnell said.
That tension was real and she didn’t help it any. But then, I bet that the biggest priority of the local GOP leadership is convincing Christine that the IPoDs are the What’s Happening Now Conservatives, in hopes that she’ll be just one more anchor over there. Too bad that Christine has figured out the formula to get paid, and she’ll probably get that the IPoDs don’t have any money. But all of this *waiting* just masks the fact that there aren’t good candidates on the GOP side anyway. If there was, they wouldn’t be waiting for her.