The so-called Dean of the Washington Press Corps turns his attentions to Delaware this AM, with a column that discusses his thoughts about the possible upcoming race between Mike Castle and Beau Biden for Senate. It is a rare thing for the Villagers to turn their attentions to us, and I suppose we should expect more of this in the coming months.

Dean Broder is pretty much the Dean of the CW that gets manufactured in DC — the CW that almost never has any relationship to the world that the rest of us live in, but you can count on the Sunday AM bobbleheads to bow in the direction of the remarkably attenuated view of the world inhabited by Broder and take their lead from this same view that doesn’t know that the influence of the Dean of the Washington Press Corps only extends to his coterie of court jesters these days.

That said, there is so much that is dead wrong about this piece that it is really hard to know where to start. But start, we will:

1. He only chatted with Mike Castle here.  There is no way to tell if some of the data here came from Castle or from Broder’s out-of-step view of the world.

2. With the seat-warmer appointee who was named in January to succeed the
   vice president already having announced that he will not run next
   year

   Well, yeah — this was the deal that was made for this seat. A deal that would not confer the advantages of incumbency on anyone and would let voters choose. A controversial deal that Senator Kaufman seems ready to keep, so I’m wondering why this factors into anything here other than the Dean getting in his word quota.

3. He has won statewide races for governor and lieutenant governor and has rarely finished below 65 percent

   He has won alot of races here (he has been around long enough to win alot of races here) but his last two races were definitely under 65% (2006 -57.2; 2008 -61.1) and the last result was against a woefully underfunded and not particularly competent Democratic candidate.

4. Castle is a leader and survivor among the declining ranks of moderate House Republicans. As such, he is a particularly accurate barometer of Obama’s political health and the dynamics of the House of Representatives.

   There are two things here that are features of the current version of the CW and both of them avoid the real issues here. Mike Castle is a moderate because he has convinced the Press to call him that. He has been voting pretty much down the line with the BushCo agenda and before that with Gringich’s agenda with a few well-publicized marches off of the reservation. And even then, those marches are on things that interest him, like stem cell research, the environment and campaign finance reforms. Things that may interest his constituents — like health care reform, the Iraq war, surviving the Bush recession and so on simply do not. On those things that you might expect a moderate NE Republican to be a real moderate on, Castle has always been found with his staunch conservative counterparts. For instance, he could — like Lincoln Chafee — have done some real questioning and voting against the BushCo agenda. Or he could have demonstrated some leadership in demanding that BushCo pay for his agenda — tax cuts, wars, and all. But he didn’t. He busied himself with those things that interested him. Not with an agenda that an old-school moderate might have at the top of the list — like fiscal responsibility. I think that the NRCC wants to make this a referendum on Obama’s policies, but I would be really surprised if Castle’s record of a Bush enabler doesn’t come front and center.

5. The early polls on a possible Castle-Biden race give the Republican double-digit leads

   Sorry — the early polls have shown this race (as much as it can be called a race) to be pretty much a dead heat.

6. He joined all other House Republicans in voting against the economic stimulus bill

   He sure did. And he has been running all over the state posing for photo-ops with the requisite Giant Check, taking credit for the work that the stimulus is doing. Hypocritical. Utterly. And since Broder actually chatted with Castle, I wonder why he did not ask him if he thought those photos juxtaposed against his “moderate” vote against these funds looked like hypocrisy.

7. In discussing the health insurance reform Castle told Broder:
   

   “…I’m not going to vote for a program that I think is too costly and unmanageable.”

   But he did vote for the tax cuts which produced a structural deficit out of surpluses; he did vote for the Iraq War which deepened those deficits; he did vote for Medicare Part D which was not paid for and provides subsidies to pharmaceutical companies.

Broder is very interested in pronouncing on the business of moderation but he is not so interested in taking on the wingnut repubs that have taken over one of the parties and not so interested in real governing.  He has proven over and over that his interests are in pronouncing to the Villagers and then complaining when those of us outside do not treat all of this received wisdom with reverence.