Shortly after TEA Party favorite Christine O'Donnell won the Delaware Republican Party nomination for U.S. Senate back in September, several prominent center-right blogs like Power Line persistently complained that O'Donnell was a bad choice and Delaware Republicans/TEA partiers were giving up an almost certain pick up of Joe Biden's old Senate seat with the "moderate" (i.e., liberal) Mike Castle.
Now that O'Donnell has since lost the election to self-described "bearded Marxist" Chris Coons, Paul Mirengoff at Power Line just can't refrain from basically wagging his finger at and telling O'Donnell supporters, "I told you so." Although the tone of self-righteousness is a bit subtle, it's nevertheless noticeable. But lost among the veiled condescension by Mirengoff is his failure to recognize the impact that he and his Power Line cohorts might have had in O'Donnell's predicted loss in the general election. It didn't help, for instance, that they lent legitimacy to the idiotic troll that O'Donnell had once dabbled in witchcraft - while she was in high school. Power Line also conveniently fails to mention the fact that Mike Castle acted like a complete sore loser and refused to back O'Donnell after she won the primary. Had Castle done so, I don't think it would have been unreasonable to believe that O'Donnell's chances of winning would have increased significantly.
Mirengoff concludes his blog post by expressing hope that conservatives don't repeat the "blunder" of nominating another Republican candidate like Christine O'Donnell. I just about wanted to punch through my computer screen when I read that.
