Let’s get this straight. Christine O’Donnell actually won her primary. But Karl Rove began actively campaigning for the Democrat in Delaware the day after O’Donnell won, when there was no other GOP candidate to back, when the voters had already decided, and blaming her for supposedly squandering a GOP Senate majority.
Lisa Murkowski lost her primary. Yet she is running as a write-in candidate, for no reason she can publicly justify. She is a spoiler who is likely to cause the loss of a GOP Senate seat.
Yet where is the full-throated assault on Lisa Murkowski by the GOP leadership?
You will never hear it. She has since then been reaching out to lobbyists and telling Alaskans that she will keep her committee positions, which means she is colluding with the GOP Senate leadership. They would prefer Murkowski, but they would rather have a Democrat than have Joe Miller.
The Combine wants to stop anyone who threatens the game.
UPDATE: A very knowledgeable friend admonished me, saying I was unfair to Karl Rove, and that he had not yet spoken about Murkowski, and would probably oppose her write-in campaign. This turned out to be correct. Even more, Rove has indeed spoken on it, and has called the Murkowski effort “sad and sorry,” and opposed it forcefully. OK. Credit where it is due on this one. Subotai, whose comment I previously quoted, and I both got it wrong about Rove re: Murkowski.
Let’s see how the GOP leadership handles the next few weeks. They do not have the trust of many people who should be their base. George Bush lost me with his second inaugural speech, in January 2005, which was totally detached from reality. But I did not project that onto the entire GOP. For all its (serious) defects, it was my party, if push came to shove. But in the last few months I have lost 47 years of thinking of the GOP as “us” and started thinking of it as “them.”
I hope that changes.
UPDATE II: Karl Rove should have said, “well, the voters have spoken, and the Republicans have a candidate and I support that candidate. This is an unusual election year, and people are very energized, and they decided to bet on a long shot, and do things the hard way. We’ll see how it works out. Ms. O’Donnell has a steep hill to climb, but I wish her well. I have worked on a few campaigns myself, and I would be happy to chat with her.”
How the Hell hard would that have been?