Is the Republican Establishment suicidal?

So asks Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator.  Following the remarkable win in the Delaware primaries to fill Joe Biden's seat in the Senate, by Tea Party movement candidate Christine O'Donnell over liberal Republican establishment candidate Mike Castle, Washington insider GOP politicians, and in particular Karl Rove threw a fit.



This election cycle is proving to be a watershed, where the voters are fed up with the business as usual good old boys in Washington, and the GOP needs to man up, Rove in particular. They need to get behind the candidates win the primaries. The Tea Party movement is here, and maybe it is an a one shot deal, or maybe it is here for a while. But the GOP ignores them at the risk of alienating their base. Rove and company need to have a look at the 19th century Whig party and understand that unless they change, this is their future.

Update 1:  I'm usually in agreement with these guys, but on this occasion I think that Scott Johnson over at the Power Line blog  gets it wrong.  Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin have been going ballistic over the Delaware primaries, and people who supported the "candidate who can not win" over a liberal RINO who votes with the Democrats more often than with his own party.  Limbaugh has proposed suspending  William Buckley's rule of thumb that conservatives ought to support the rightward most viable candidate in a given race, and replace it with the Limbaugh Rule, where we should support the most conservative candidate PERIOD.  In normal times, I'm inclined to go along with the Buckley rule, but these are not normal times, and it is a one time chance for conservatives to kick the establishment rascals out of Washington and bring some new blood there, who maybe, just maybe properly represent the American people, at least for a while.

Update 2:  Over at Hot Air, in a thinly veiled smack down at Rove, Ed Morrissey hits the nail on the head.

Instead of pouting, Republican leaders in Delaware and around the country need to unite around the nominee, who was chosen by the Republicans in Delaware.  Had Castle won the nomination, they would have demanded unity themselves, and rightly so.   If they want to continue to issue snarky, anonymous asides and in essence take their ball and go home, don’t expect the electorate to follow them into battle in the future.  Rarely have I seen such childishness from the supposed leaders of a political establishment, who set the very rules and customs they now want to ignore because they just got embarrassed on a national stage.

Grow up, shut up, and get to work.

Exactly.