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Pat Buchanan: The War on Christine O’Donnell
The American Conservative ^ | September 16, 2010 | Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on 09/16/2010 7:33:42 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Is the Republican establishment losing it?

Is the party leadership capable of uniting a governing coalition as Richard Nixon did before Watergate and Ronald Reagan resurrected in the 1980s?

Observing the hysteria and nastiness of Karl Rove and the GOP establishment at the stunning triumph of Tea Party Princess Christine O’Donnell, the answer is no.

This party is not ready to rule.

Consider. In its grand strategy to recapture a Senate that George W. Bush and Rove lost in 2006, the GOP Senate leadership endorsed all its own caucus members for re-election, if they chose to run, then picked out all its favorite candidates for the open and Democratic seats.

Conservatives and tea party activists, however, had other ideas. They began to pick their own candidates. And, again and again, the Senate’s chosen were rejected in favor of tea party challengers who had the endorsement of Sarah Palin or South Carolina’s Jim DeMint.

Arlen Specter was rejected by the Pennsylvania GOP and left the party. Rand Paul routed Sen. Mitch McConnell’s man in Kentucky. Charlie Crist was challenged by Marco Rubio in Florida. Crist, too, departed. Sen. Bob Bennett was denied renomination in Utah. Sen. Lisa Murkowski lost her primary in Alaska to a little-known fellow named Joe Miller.

But Delaware was the stunner. Rep. Mike Castle, a former two-term governor who had been winning elections for 40 years, was a certain victor in November.

Challenger O’Donnell, however, ended all that.

Yet, though her conservative credentials are far superior to those of Castle, O’Donnell was made the object of a wilding attack by National Review and The Weekly Standard, Charles Krauthammer, who lashed out at Palin and DeMint for “irresponsbility,” and Rove, who on Sean Hannity’s show went postal as soon as the returns came in.

Now, on paper, O’Donnell is a far tougher sell in Delaware than is Castle. But her defeat is not certain. Not in this volatile year.

And what is the justification for the savagery of the attacks on her, from her own?

What has this woman done? Did she vote for Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court like Lindsey Graham? Did she support the Obama stimulus like Olympia Snow and Susan Collins? What did she do to deserve the trashing?

The answer is not distant.

To the Republican establishment, tea party people are field hands. Their labors are to be recognized and rewarded, but they are to stay off the porch and not presume to sit at the master’s table.

And what O’Donnell did, with her amazing victory, is to imperil that establishment’s return to power. That is why these Republicans went ballistic.

O’Donnell’s conservative convictions and Castle’s social liberalism mean nothing to them. They are about power and all that goes with it.

And that raises a question too long put off.

What is the Republican establishment going to do, what are the neoconservatives going to do, if returned to power?

Are not these the same people who assisted George W. Bush in stampeding the nation into an unnecessary war that got 4,400 Americans killed to strip Saddam Hussein of weapons he did not have?

Are these not the same people who misled or deceived us about Iraq’s role in 9/11?

Are these Republican scribes and senators not the same folks who went all-out for NAFTA and GATT and the WTO and MFN and PNTR for China, those brilliant trade deals that gave us $5 trillion in trade deficits, wiped out 6 million manufacturing jobs and 50,000 factories in one decade, and put us into permanent debt to China?

Are these not some of the same folks who backed the Bush-McCain amnesty and did nothing for 20 years, as millions of illegals invaded America? Now that all America is on fire, they too want to “build the dang fence.”

Are not the National Review and Weekly Standard scribblers and their neocon comrades of the mainstream media not now drumming up another war for Americans to fight, against Iran?

Are these not the same folks who went along with No Child Left Behind and the biggest run-up in social spending since Great Society days?

Beltway Republicans say they have learned their lesson. But the tea party folks and conservatives who vaulted O’Donnell to victory are saying: You had your chance. Now, move aside for new leaders.

Why is the tea party wrong — and the establishment right?

The first tea party rebellion was the Barry Goldwater movement. When it triumphed at the Cow Palace, Nelson Rockefeller denounced the movement as riddled with radicals, baited the Goldwater people at the convention and refused to endorse the nominee.

A decade later, Vice President Rockefeller got his payback, when conservatives demanded that President Ford drop him off the ticket as the price of renomination. Ford agreed.

In its contemptuous response to O’Donnell’s victory, the GOP establishment of today looked like nothing so much as the Rockefeller Republican establishment of yesteryear. Its time is coming, too.


TOPICS: Issues; Parties; State and Local; U.S. Senate
KEYWORDS: 2010; karlrove; odonnell; rove
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To: Joe 6-pack
Pat is worse than a stopped clock. He’s more like a stopped calendar...right about 30 times a year. This is one of those times.

I wholeheartedly concur. I don't even agree with some of the points he makes against Bush in this article, but he's right about immigration and the outrageous spending, and he's right that the elitists are in big trouble now.

21 posted on 09/16/2010 8:23:42 PM PDT by Rocky (REPEAL IT!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

bump


22 posted on 09/16/2010 8:24:24 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd (Yes, as a matter of fact, what you do in your bedroom IS my business.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Notwithstanding his continued obsession against the war and his personal faults, Pat is right they aren’t ready to lead. The rats in the GOP deserve to remain in the minority and I have no desire to help them become a majority. I want the conservative Senate candidates to win, the rest to lose and to pick up the House and then various state legislatures and governor Masions because of re-districitng. The GOP led by these fools shouldn’t be allowed into a majority until we can send more re-inforcements in ‘12 for the conservatives that WILL win this year.


23 posted on 09/16/2010 8:25:49 PM PDT by Soul Seeker (“I was there when we had the numbers, but didn’t have the principles.”---Jim DeMint)
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To: TigerClaws

Can we add no more central planning?


24 posted on 09/16/2010 8:39:20 PM PDT by freedomfiter2
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To: freedomfiter2
Can we add no more central planning?

Ignore it. Defy it. Monkeywrench it.

Central planning only has power if it is maintained as a shared psychosis.


Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

25 posted on 09/16/2010 8:42:02 PM PDT by The Comedian
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Pat Buchanon is a skunk.

At first I agreed with some of what he was saying but then he is just shows how much he is a loser the way he trashes true conservative viewpoints with his radical libertarian vision. He could care less that many of his views are more in line with Code Pink and not the majority of conservatives.


26 posted on 09/16/2010 8:48:22 PM PDT by TheBigIf
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

We are dragging the Party kicking and screaming over to Conservativism. The last thing they want ot do is give up their power.

Pray for America


27 posted on 09/16/2010 8:48:36 PM PDT by bray (The Tea Party Manual: http://www.brayincandy.com/id239.html)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Has anybody seen Huckabee on the O’Donnell win? I just noticed I haven’t seen or heard anything about him for several days...not that I care ...but he is usually mouthing off.


28 posted on 09/16/2010 8:49:28 PM PDT by lonestar (Barry is furious the big spill wasn't caused by EXXON...would have nationalized it by now.)
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To: dragnet2

I was surprised by Krauthamer’s diatribe also. Castle is a democrat wanabee..............He left too many votes out there for observation. The Dems are sad because they count on Castle types to stab us in the back at their bidding.


29 posted on 09/16/2010 8:52:53 PM PDT by Goreknowshowtocheat
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To: Al B.

yep, and have to remember we HELD our noses and voted McCain. How much more stinking loyal can that be?


30 posted on 09/16/2010 8:59:34 PM PDT by annieokie
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
To the Republican establishment, tea party people are field hands. Their labors are to be recognized and rewarded, but they are to stay off the porch and not presume to sit at the master’s table.

BINGO!
31 posted on 09/16/2010 9:00:44 PM PDT by nhwingut (Palin/Bachmann '12)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet; DCPatriot

Yep, that’s right, those of us who oppose the big-government, welfare-warfare, guns-and-butter liberal neocons must hate the Jooooooooooooos.

WRONG!!!

We just don’t like continuous warfare-welfare types.


32 posted on 09/16/2010 9:04:58 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (Muslims are not the problem, the rest of the world is! /s)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I am still seething over Rove. And I also made a note to not trust Dana Perino. I’ve told the Mrs. that she is DC establishment. Our guy is Stuart Varney (when Perino and he appear on BOR’s show, of should I say Ted Baxter’s show).


33 posted on 09/16/2010 9:25:20 PM PDT by CT (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slx8CCjoL4E&feature=related)
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To: annieokie
yep, and have to remember we HELD our noses and voted McCain. How much more stinking loyal can that be?

I voted for the Palin half of the ticket... although I will say I most likely would have voted for McCain against Obama anyway.

I'm not 100% sure we'd have been better off in the long run with McCain as President though. I believe it took a few years of Jimmy Carter to get Reagan elected, and maybe we needed an Obama presidency to get the people fired up enough to start an uprising to take the country back now.

34 posted on 09/16/2010 9:55:54 PM PDT by Wissa (Gone Galt)
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To: babble-on

Very classy.


35 posted on 09/16/2010 10:05:08 PM PDT by Jlazoon
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*


36 posted on 09/16/2010 10:18:16 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3 (Obama is everything Oklahoma is not.)
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To: dfwgator

If term limits are appropriate for the presidency (they are), then they are good for all federal offices. Two terms max for any office.


37 posted on 09/16/2010 11:09:10 PM PDT by skookum55 (Born American with the guarantee of a republic; destined to die a dhimmi on Obama's path to sharia.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

“And what is the justification for the savagery of the attacks on her, from her own?

What has this woman done? Did she vote for Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court like Lindsey Graham? Did she support the Obama stimulus like Olympia Snow and Susan Collins? What did she do to deserve the trashing?”

BINGO!

And IDK why some paleos go beyond against US supporting Israel militarily, and seem to be anti-Semitic.

BUT, at least they are consistent. They want the USA out of ALL countries, and giving NO military aide to anybody, Jew, Arab, Or Korean.


38 posted on 09/16/2010 11:11:44 PM PDT by TeachableMoment
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To: EQAndyBuzz

And as we saw today with Obama and Biden consoling Castle, I have a feeling that our candidates are about to be bushwhacked by both left and lefter in exchange for some givebacks.


I have that feeling also...i think this is the tip of the iceberg...i won’t be suprised by anything this political season.


39 posted on 09/16/2010 11:27:16 PM PDT by chasio649 (amused)
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To: CT

I haven’t been able to watch the tube ....is Varney against the COD smear by Rove and Perino?


40 posted on 09/16/2010 11:32:00 PM PDT by chasio649 (amused)
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