Category: Christine O’Donnell

Sarah Palin’s Biggest Gamble

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Following up on the earlier post about Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Christine O’Donnell, I have spoken to a few sources, one of whom described this as “the longest of long shots,” a decision based not on political calculation but as a matter of “pure principle.”

Another source pointed out that Rush Limbaugh might have had an influence, as he returned from vacation Tuesday and pounded hard on the Delaware primary — following his friend Mark Levin, who has been O’Donnell’s staunchest defender on talk radio.

At any rate, here’s Sarah Palin’s Facebook endorsement:

The wave of positive change can really sweep across our land with the election of Constitutional Conservatives who promise to use common sense and rein in the federal government spending! Please support Christine O’Donnell in Delaware. She will support efforts for America’s energy security, patient-centered health care reform, cutting government waste, and letting the private sector thrive and prosper! We can’t afford “more of the same” in Washington. Christine will help usher in the real change we need to get America on the right track. Please visit her website at www.christine2010.com and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Just five days before Sept. 14 primary, can Palin’s endorsement turn the tide in Delaware? Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl has a similar reaction, citing this endorsement by Palin as a matter of “principle . . . integrity” and certain other admirable qualities. A tip of the fedora to Dan who, as I said Tuesday, went on the warpath against RINO Mike Castle and Castle’s supporters. And I must point out that it was co-blogger Smitty who first called our attention to Christine O’Donnell back in March.

PALIN ENDORSES O’DONNELL!

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MIRACLE! Dave Weigel reports that Sarah Palin just called into Sean Hannity‘s radio show to officially endorse Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware GOP Senate primary.

Answered prayer! Is it too little, too late?

UPDATE: From O’Donnell’s Twitter feed:

UPDATE II: Matt Lewis notes: “So far, Palin has not commented on her Facebook page or Twitter feed.”

UPDATE III: Ian Lazaran at C4P promises audio of the endorsement soon. I just got off the phone with O’Donnell campaign manager Matt Moran, who says he’ll get me a telephone interview with Christine.

UPDATE IV: Will Ace of Spades be eating crow?

UPDATE V: Sarah Palin’s biggest gamble.

Somebody pointed out that the Delaware presidential primary in 2012 — Feb. 7 — will be one of the early ones on the calendar. Probably just a coincidence.

Establishment Turns Against Murkowski

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Now that Joe Miller has won the Alaska GOP Senate primary, the Republican establishment is his friend:

National Republican Senatorial Committee senior adviser and veteran GOP strategist Terry Nelson flew to Alaska Wednesday night to assist Republican Senate nominee Joe Miller’s campaign . . .
Nelson is going up to meet Miller and his campaign team and make clear that the committee wants to be helpful with fundraising, field operations and overall strategy as the insurgent begins his general election bid.
Nelson’s trip is also aimed at sending a signal to Sen. Lisa Murkowski that the national party is fully committed to Miller.

Yes, the establishment does know how to wield power:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) will likely be forced out of her party leadership position should she decide to launch a write-in or third-party candidacy, a Senate Republican said Wednesday.

Kind of funny how getting 51% of the primary vote changes things. And if 50,000 pro-life voters in Delaware show up next Tuesday to vote for Christine O’Donnell, things will change even more.

Your All-Dan-Riehl Daily Delaware Republican Senate Primary Update

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Dan Riehl has been been on the warpath against Mike Castle and Castle’s “conservative” supporters:

And finally, Dan links Tammy Bruce’s interview with Christine O’Donnell:

Think about this: Tammy Bruce is a Jewish lesbian and a former NOW official. Christine O’Donnell is a Catholic social conservative. Yet Tammy is supporting Christine because Tammy understands that when you’re in a fight, you need fighters.

Sometimes you don’t get to choose the battlefield, and you have to go to war with the army you’ve got. And I still say that, among the 700,000 residents of Delaware, there must be at least 50,000 pro-life voters. That’s about twice what O’Donnell needs to win this GOP primary against the biggest RINO in Congress.

If only these hard-core pro-lifers will stand strong and go to the polls next Tuesday, Christine wins that battle. 

Such a stunning upset — just seven weeks ahead of Nov. 2 — will make her an overnight cause célèbre for conservatives nationwide and give her overwhelming momentum against her no-name Democrat opponent. Pray hard and do not give up hope: Sarah Palin re-Tweeted a pro-O’Donnell message today.

Don’t listen to the smears. Don’t listen to the pollsters. Don’t listen to the pundits. Listen to your heart.

Stand up and fight! WOLVERINES!

CHRISTINE O’DONNELL for U.S. SENATE

Weigel on Delaware

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Dave Weigel is a native of Delaware and has a feature at Slate about the Senate campaign between Mike Castle and Christine O’Donnell. He explains last week’s onslaught of negative attacks on O’Donnell:

When she declined to stand aside for Castle, who’s been eying an open Senate seat for years, the party ignored her.
It stopped ignoring her last month. In Alaska, Joe Miller . . . defied predictions and polls in order to beat Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the GOP primary. The Tea Party Express, the political arm of the movement that had spent $550,000 on ads to help Miller, declared victory and planted a new flag in Delaware. O’Donnell, the group announced, would be the movement’s new cause, with ads and fundraising drives that would push her over the top.
The Republican establishment woke up and turned the cannons.

And that’s the story in a nutshell. Everyone who has been participating in the oppo-research dump on O’Donnell is doing the bidding of the same GOP Establishment that tried to foist Charlie Crist on an unwilling electorate.

Some people have accused O’Donnell of paranoia for complaining about being followed by video “trackers.” But from Weigel’s story, here’s the kick in the head:

She happily points out the tracker that Republicans have sent to follow her.

Yeah, that’s right: Republicans are paying these people to stalk her. It’s outrageous, and anyone who supports Mike Castle is endorsing that kind of tactic in what is — I feel obliged to point out — a GOP primary for an open seat. This is what the Not One Red Cent rebellion is about: The party establishment need to stop meddling in contested primaries.

Let me repeat the question I asked over the weekend: How many pro-life voters in Delaware? Castle’s pro-choice, O’Connell’s pro-life, and that life-or-death issue ought to be decisive in a GOP primary.

CHRISTINE O’DONNELL for U.S. SENATE

Mark Levin vs. Allahpundit (PLUS: How Many Pro-Lifer Voters in Delaware?)

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Levin is rapidly becoming talk radio’s most Web 2.0-savvy host. He’s got nearly 40,000 Twitter followers and more than 200,000 fans on Facebook. And he’s not only reading blogs, he’s arguing with bloggers:

Allahpundit over at Hotair, linking to like-minded bloggers here and there, argues, among other things, that he thought Beck was wrong when Beck said he’d rather have seen Obama as president than McCain.  This is off the mark.  I criticized Beck for the same thing.  But comparing a conservative challenge to a liberal in a Republican primary to Obama v. McCain in a general election is incoherent. . . .

Read the whole thing. The subject is the Delaware GOP Senate primary, where Levin is Christine O’Donnell’s most influential supporter. Here’s his June 24 interview with Christine:

O’Donnell points out that she could beat Mike Castle in the Delaware with as few as 20,000 votes. Let’s parse those numbers just a bit. According to a CNN exit poll, 27% of Delaware voters in 2008 were Catholic, and 39% of those voted for John McCain. So roughly 11% of the Delaware electorate are Republican Catholics — probably solid pro-lifers — and in 2008, the turnout in Delaware was 408,000 voters.

So let’s say there are 40,000 pro-life Catholic voters in Delaware, and there have got to be at least 10,000 pro-life evangelical Protestants. If there are 50,000 pro-life voters in Delaware, that’s almost exactly the total turnout (50,237) in the 2008 Delaware GOP primary. But this is an off-year election and, in 2006, the total vote in the Republican primary was 14,386.

Do Delaware’s pro-life they know that Mike Castle gets only a 10% score from the National Right to Life Committee? Do these pro-life voters know that Mike Castle was one of only 11 Republicans who voted against a law that would have made it a federal crime to transport a minor across state lines for abortion without parental notification? Have they seen the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List’s endorsement of O’Donnell, when SBA president Marjorie Dannenfelser said:

“Unlike her primary opponent, who has an explicitly pro-abortion voting record, O’Donnell has expressed her strong determination to be a vocal advocate for women and unborn children in abortion debates on the floor of the U.S. Senate . . . A new women’s movement which affirms its original pro-life roots is making its way to the U.S. Senate and O’Donnell is one of its brightest new stars.”

Forget about everything else: This is about life vs. death, Christine O’Donnell is pro-life, and I know what pro-lifers are like. They vote. They will crawl through broken glass and scale a 10-foot fence with three strands of concertina wire on top just to get to the polls on Election Day, if you show them a candidate who will stand up for the right to life. We know who that candidate is, don’t we?

CHRISTINE O’DONNELL for U.S. SENATE

Dan Riehl Has His Own ‘Ilk’?

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According to Stephen Bainbridge:

By letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, Riehl and his ilk are ensuring themselves of a pure minority.

The rest of us in the blogosphere are now jealous of Dan. What do we have to do to get our own ilks?

Is supporting Christine O’Donnell sufficient to qualify us as members of the Riehl ilk? I’m thinking he could make some money off this: “Dan Riehl Got His Own Ilk and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.”

BTW, I’m back home. The flight from Anchorage sucked. I took a red-eye, but only got two hours’ sleep on the plane. Just now woke up from a two-hour nap. Still feeling fuzzy-brained.

Update (Smitty): Yep, that one’s for the books (h/t the Mighty Melissa):