Tea-Bagging the United States Senate

Charles Pierce,

...Christine O'Donnell is a sideshow freak.

Seriously now, she was a crackpot when she rose on primary morning, and she's a crackpot now, and she will be a crackpot whether she wins or loses in November. She no more belongs in the Senate of the United States today than she did the day she was born. That 30,000-odd primates in Delaware thinks she belongs there is their problem. If enough people in Delaware come to think so, then she becomes our problem.

O'Donnell is a creature of an age in which politics have no meaning beyond performance art. She is the Creature From The Green Room, with no apparent public career beyond being available whenever some teenage booker from the cable shows needed someone to say something reliably stupid. She is one of those people who'd show up at CNN with a waterbowl in her teeth if someone there blew a dog whistle.

Her resume is so thin as to be opaque, and a lot of it seems to be a lie. She seems to be something of a deadbeat, and "U.S. Senator" seems to be her idea of an entry-level position. This morning, she stands one step away from the job.

And he goes on from there.

Last night I got home from a pleasant evening out to catch the results coming in. My initial reaction was, "My god, it's like Frankenstein - the Tea Baggers are going to destroy the GOP." After 2 years of whipping their base into a froth over the socialistmuslimkenyanfascist the chickens have come home to roost. Jon Chait had a similar reaction, 

The conservative movement has spent the last 20 months sowing hysteria about President Obama's agenda.

The most respectable Republicans call the president a socialist, a radical, a threat to freedom. The less respectable Republicans, many of them highly influential, call him an alien, a sympathizer of radical Islam, a conscious enemy of the United States who is trying to wreck the economy. Obama is a dangerous figure, he cannot be compromised with, and the fight against him is a twilight struggle to save the last vestiges of the Republic.

And so it has been amusing to watch Republicans as they desperately attempted to persuade Republican voters in Delaware to support moderate Mike Castle over Christine O'Donnell...

But the Republican base has been taught not to think this way. This isn't just politics, remember? This is a twilight struggle for freedom. And Mike Castle didn't just cast a couple bad votes. He acquiesced in a sinister plan to undermine capitalism. How could they ever support a candidate like that?

Win, lose, or draw it is going to be an entertaining 6 weeks. I have been sort of dejectedly following this election season and for the first time in nearly 16 years I am not volunteering for nor paid staff on a campaign. But last night's results have got me amped up. I still think Democratic chances of holding the House are essentially nil but beating back the Tea-hadists seems to be a worthy calling. Now if only Colorado voters can begin to see Ken Buck as part of the same extremist wing of the GOP.