Sorry you’re all wrong about Christine O’Donnell.
She should have been a winner.
Rove did her in. It was that election which started me against Rove.
I don't think she had any hope of winning. DE is a blue state and Mike Castle is probably as red as DE is comfortable with. O'Donnell was a bit of a doofus, so that did not help. But for Rove to pile on was just retarded. That was Rove's ego talking. Of course, conservative GOP figures do return the favor by stepping all over moderate GOP candidates. The 11th Commandment, namely "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican" appears to have fallen by the wayside.
I didn’t love O Donnell, but Rove was a much bigger factor in her race than with Akin. Akin had many many detractors not named Rove. O Donnell was a situation where it was pure tea party v establishment. The other thing about O Donnell is that the Republican she beat was a liberal ass. Akin beat one good and one very good conservative in the primary, thanks to Dem voters. Thus the Akin and O Donnell situations are not at all the same.
I agree that Rove did his best to savage O’Donnell. There’s little doubt in my mind he was trying to take revenge on her for bumping off Mike Castle during the primaries. Where I would disagree is in assessing her chances. She’d been trounced twice before running for Senate in Delaware (admittedly the first time being a write-in candidate), and made some fairly large and rookie mistakes even during the third campaign - the “I’m not a witch” ad, for example. I just don’t think a majority of the voters in deep blue Delaware were every going to be on board with her.
Just MHO, of course.