Slate’s David Weigel, who was born and raised in
Delaware, does a good job of
chronicling the carnage from that state’s recent primary. Mike
Castle was clearly the state’s most electable Republican. How
electable? Read it and weep, GOP: “Castle won five elections while
his party was losing the presidency, five elections while his party
was losing the governor’s mansion, and four elections…while his
party was losing the race for U.S. Senate.”
Castle was shouldered aside by a political novice, a former vice
presidential candidate, and a few thousand Tea Party activists.
Unless a miracle happens, this result will throw a seat that had
been in play to the Democrats in November.
Tea Partiers dispute that assessment. They maintain, publicly at
least, that Christine O’Donnell can win. But they also insist that
there is more at stake in this election than control of the U.S.
Senate.
Castle was a moderate Republican who cast votes many
conservatives find abhorrent, including votes for the first massive
government bailout and the cap-and-trade bill. A vote for O’Donnell
was a message aimed at moderate and liberal Republicans around the
country — roughly, “We are watching how you vote, so don’t cross
us.”
Countless unimaginative pundits will seize on a likely O’Donnell
defeat to say that the Tea Party has gone too far this time, but
that misses the point. Conservatives have moved the country to the
right in the past. They can do so again if they are willing to show
a little independence from the Republican Party.
William F. “Bill” Buckley Jr. launched National Review
in 1955 to be the flagship magazine of the conservative movement.
The journal did battle not just with liberal Democrats but plenty
of moderate and liberal Republicans as well. In both 1956 and 1960,
the magazine refused to endorse the Republican candidate for
president.
In 1964, the magazine’s editors watched conservative firebrand
Barry Goldwater go down to an overwhelming national defeat. In
1965, Bill ran for mayor of New York as the Conservative Party
candidate and failed to keep liberal Republican John Lindsay from
being elected.
These defeats were discouraging, but they were also necessary.
They laid the groundwork for future conservative challenges, many
of which succeeded as voters started to be more accepting of
conservative ideas. In 1970, Bill’s brother James “Jim” Buckley ran
as a Conservative candidate for Senate from New York and beat a
liberal Democrat and a liberal Republican.
In 1976, Jim snagged the Republican nomination and National
Review charter subscriber Ronald Reagan came only a few
delegates short of denying a sitting president the nomination of
his own party. And in 1980, Reagan and a horde of new conservative
activists and congressmen invaded our nation’s capital.
And so it went: Rudy Giuliani’s victory as mayor of New York and
the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 were made possible in
part because conservatives were willing to challenge not only
liberal Democrats but members of the stupid party as well.
In the past, conservatives proved willing to work with
Republicans when possible, and against them when necessary.
Following Bill Buckley’s lead, they took the long view that ideas
matter more than elections, and that conventional wisdom can be
bent over time. The approach has worked before. There’s no reason
to think that Tea Partiers can’t make use of it again.
(And by the way, I have a new book on this subject…find it
here.)
