A friend emailed me about this as I was driving home from the airport last night. I had only just learned of O’Donnell’s victory over the ultimate establishment guy which, particularly after his campaign, is the best I can say about him. Now that his effort to parlay his record into a promotion is now spent there is nothing more to say about him. You see, the primary is over.

Right?

If Castle’s campaign had instead been rewarded, I would have to weigh him against the alterative, now no longer another Republican but someone who had described himself as previously being a Marxist. Primaries are fought to be won, if within bounds. Your operation within or outside of those bounds informs the voters about whether and what level of support you deserve. If you win the primary as a Republican, even if you are Mike Castle, you are usually, though not always, running against someone even worse on the principles that matter to conservatives. And then the calculus changes.

This gives one pause to recall that the Castle crew’s unseemly efforts were rationalized with the argument that they simply wanted to ensure the seat was held by a Republican.

Well, today, that claim has officially passed its sell-by date. Today and the next few weeks shall tell whether there was any truth to that. Evidence on this score, like that episode at issue, began coming in with the election returns. Any continuing vitriol — and, while it was difficult to tell if it became more intense, it will be easy to see if it stops — further diminishes the already unconvincing rationalization.

And if the answer is that this apparently was not what was behind all of that — or, at minimum, that that is no longer what the continuing bile is about — what does that tell us? Other, that is, than that the voters made the right choice in telling this guy and his crew that they did not deserve elevation to the U.S. Senate?