Today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail was so interesting, I thought I would post it up here.  As a shout-out to the WSJ, let me encourage you to go to this link and sign up to get the Diary to your own email account.  There is a small fee — but as you can see from below, well worth it…  The last item below is California-specific.

The Tea Party Continues

New York and Delaware Republican voters dumped the choices of their party establishments over the side in a mini-Tea Party last night.

In New York, former Rep. Rick Lazio had been anointed by GOP leaders at a state convention dominated by insiders. But voters were skeptical of Mr. Lazio’s languid style and years of representing Wall Street interests as a lobbyist. They gave an overwhelming victory to Carl Paladino, a blunt-talking Buffalo businessman who told WABC radio that the anti-mosque ads he ran continuously on that talk radio station helped put him over the top.

Mr. Paladino stands little chance of beating Democrat Andrew Cuomo in this fall’s governor race, but perhaps his upset primary win will send a message to GOP insiders that their closed nomination system needs to be reformed. Voters also rebelled against party insiders in Long Island’s 1st Congressional district, where businessman Randy Altschuler delivered a humiliating defeat to Chris Cox, the son of New York’s GOP state chairman.

In Delaware, the voter revolt against party bigwigs was even more pronounced. GOP Congressman Mike Castle had represented Delaware for 18 years in the House, compiling a voting record that made him look as if he would be more comfortable in the Democratic than Republican Party. He had avoided competitive primary challenges for years, using party rules to his advantage.

Last night, his bows to liberalism finally caught up with him as he lost his bid to move up to the Senate after a 53% to 47% primary loss to Christine O’Donnell, a marketing consultant who won key support from the Tea Party Express and Sarah Palin. Ms. O’Donnell’s well-publicized financial problems failed to derail her candidacy, in part because Mr. Castle ran ads touting his record of bringing spending home to Delaware, giving conservatives no reason to vote for him other than his greater electability. And Mr. Castle’s increasingly negative attacks on Ms. O’Donnell clearly didn’t help his cause. Political analyst David Mark points out: "Hard-edged political tactics often backfire in the First State. Voters are on a first-name basis with elected officials, and it’s viewed, fairly or not, as unseemly to so directly attack opponents."

The GOP party establishment has been rebuked by voters in a series of primaries this year. Rather than rail against ignorant voters and non-mainstream challengers to their authority, perhaps it’s time for party bigwigs to reconnect with voters and drop closed-door party procedures. That’s called meeting the demands of the political marketplace, a concept that should come naturally to a party that claims to embrace open, competitive rules in economics.

For now, former Rep. Tom Davis, a moderate who has served as chair of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, has the best read on last night’s primary results: "The Republican establishment has no cachet right now."

— John Fund

Don’t Count Out a GOP Senate Just Yet

The conventional wisdom in Washington in a year when conventional wisdom has been constantly upended is that Republicans now have no chance to take control of the Senate. Christine O’Donnell’s upset victory in last night’s Delaware Senate primary has indeed likely put that seat out of reach for a GOP takeover. Her defeated opponent, Rep. Mike Castle, held a comfortable lead over Democrat Chris Coons while Ms. O’Donnell trails Mr. Coons by some ten points in recent polls.

But some perspective is in order. A month ago, few would have thought GOP candidates had any chance in two other Eastern states, West Virginia and Connecticut. Recent polls show that both states now are competitive.

In West Virginia, popular Governor Joe Manchin leads Republican businessman John Raese by only six points, in part because some voters would like to keep the governor in his current job while sending someone to Washington to fight Barack Obama. Meanwhile, the latest Quinnipiac poll in Connecticut shows Republican businesswoman Linda McMahon trailing Democratic state Attorney General Dick Blumenthal by only 51% to 45%. Nearly two out of five voters told the pollsters that Mr. Blumenthal’s exaggerations about his Vietnam War record made them less likely to vote for him.

Republicans need a net pickup of ten seats to retake the Senate. That uphill climb has gotten steeper with last night’s Delaware primary result. But the playing field of available seats has grown so much over the past few weeks as Democrats lose momentum in other states, it would be foolish punditry to claim the GOP has no chance of retaking the Senate. If anything, this political season has seen more surprises with each passing month.

— John Fund

Throwing in the Towel

In the wake of her surprise victory in the Delaware senate primary, Christine O’Donnell probably shouldn’t expect much help from her fellow Republicans. While the GOP establishment has done the expedient thing by backing upstart victors elsewhere, party leaders seem disinclined to extend the same courtesy to the winner of last night’s Delaware senate primary. To the contrary — they already have started writing the party’s obituary in the state, listing Ms. O’Donnell as the cause of death.

After Ms. O’Donnell was declared the election winner, the NRSC put out the obligatory press release congratulating her: It was exactly one sentence long and far from effusive. Karl Rove expressed his frustration even more emphatically on Fox News, telling Sean Hannity: "It does conservatives little good to support candidates who, at the end of the day, while they may be conservative in their public statements, do not evince the characteristics of rectitude and truthfulness and sincerity and character that the voters are looking for. . . . This [the Delaware Senate race] is not a race we’re gonna be able to win."

Conservative writer Charles Krauthammer, meanwhile, hammered Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint, whose endorsements helped fuel Ms. O’Donnell’s victory, as "disruptive and capricious" and likely to cost the GOP control of the Senate.

Before last night’s upset victory, the list was already long with O’Donnell detractors who uttered words that will be hard to take back now. Delaware’s GOP chairman called Ms. O’Donnell a persistent liar and a dead-bang loser in the fall. Her former campaign manager warned voters that she was using campaign funds for personal expenses and "just wanted to make a buck" — a worrisome charge given Ms. O’Donnell’s history of financial disputes, including her failure to receive her college diploma for 17 years partly because she didn’t pay her tuition.

Rep. Mike Castle, whom Ms. O’Donnell defeated, was widely believed by the GOP establishment to be an almost sure-fire winner in the general election. With the party short on cash and plenty of more-winnable races to spend it on, don’t look for the GOP cavalry to come over the hill for Ms. O’Donnell this fall.

— Carl J. Kelm

The Clinton-Brown Détente

Days after old wounds between Jerry Brown and Bill Clinton were re-opened, the two have fixed their historically chilly relationship — sort of.

After a joke Mr. Brown made at his old rival’s expense started making headlines ("I did not have taxes with this state"), the Democratic nominee for California governor called Mr. Clinton on Monday to apologize. More surprisingly, Mr. Clinton responded by issuing a statement to the L.A. Times in which he endorsed Mr. Brown’s campaign.

"I strongly support Jerry Brown for governor because I believe he was a fine mayor of Oakland, he’s been a very good attorney general, and he would be an excellent governor at a time when California needs his creativity and fiscal prudence," he said.

Conspicuously omitted was any praise of Mr. Brown’s previous tenure in the governorship from 1975 to 1983, which Mr. Clinton famously criticized when the two were rivals for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination. Those Clinton soundbites now figure prominently in an attack ad by Mr. Brown’s current GOP gubernatorial opponent Meg Whitman.

The blowup between the fellow Democrats was threatening to overshadow the race for governor and perhaps illustrates why Mr. Brown — not Ms. Whitman or Mr. Clinton — has always been Mr. Brown’s toughest opponent. Even as the two Democrats tried to bury the hatchet, political bloggers at Verum Serum dug up snippets from Mr. Brown’s radio show in the 1990s, in which he lacerated with left-wing paranoia those policies now considered Mr. Clinton’s major legacies. Not only did he directly analogize the former president to Richard Nixon. Mr. Brown accused Mr. Clinton of "breeding terrorists with the combination of NAFTA and GATT and this so-called welfare reform" and working "to destroy this country and the world itself."

Mr. Brown didn’t stop there. He denounced the president as a "criminal" and, perhaps worse, portrayed him as a faux liberal "who gives you a warm fuzzy feeling so that you focus all your negative energy on the Republicans, never realizing that in cutting welfare, in lacking effort on fuel economy standards, on alternative energy, on a living family wage, on disarmament, on getting rid of nuclear weapons — Clinton and Dole are exactly the same!"

Ouch. Luckily for Messrs. Clinton and Brown both, there’s probably no way for Ms. Whitman to shove those soundbites into a campaign ad of any current relevance. Otherwise, their truce might be short-lived.

— Carl J. Kelm and Allysia Finley

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 15th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.