By Wes Pedersen
Why that stunned look?
The semifinal votes are in. The Tea Party you thought just didn't have a chance just proved you wrong. The Teas aren't just a tease any more, they pack a hell of a punch.
Yes, particularly in Delaware, at least. It's been a liberal state for years, and the spacey upstart Christine O'Donnell, a former Republican turned Tea Party conservative, has just made it the likely bellwether state for voting upsets across the board in November.
That's amazing.
The Washington Post's Dan Balz sums up the political impact:
"The leadership of the Republican Party has lost control and is being pulled along toward an unprecedented and uncertain future."
That's huge, but you could see it beginning when John McCain took the helm of a rudderless presidential campaign and steered into the fray with an unknown Alaskan renegade in tow.
You can picture Joe Biden, the darling of liberals in Delaware and across much of the country, in the White House early Wednesday morning, reviewing the stats with the president and telling him, "Jeez, if this can happen in my state, we Democrats are in even bigger trouble than I thought. Anything can happen to us as well as to the Republicans."
And, then in typical Biden fashion, telling Obama: "And you must feel like you've been kicked in the gut. A lot of this anti stuff is about you, you know."
And so it is. It is also about Washington, perceived by millions after two years of Obamaism as incompetent, incapable of managing neither the economy, nor the urgent need for jobs, government itself, a war and a pretend peace, federal spending and a threatening batch of crises at abroad.
The anti movement is an equal opportunity despiser of both parties at this moment. Its motto has transformed itself from "Get Mad, America," to the dirty politics rouser, "Get Mud, America," and the familiar "Throw the Bums Out."
The Movement will make a mighty effort to do both up to November. And that will be a prelude to 2012 when Obama's term expires. The odds do not favor him at this point.
His pluses, and he does have them, are outweighed by a broad public view of him as too much the delayer, too much the preacher, and too prone to the self-indulgences reserved for royalty when being a royal really counted.
Democrats are not being particularly rational in their reactions to the sweeping victory by the renegade Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. They seem to believe that anti votes are one-sided, against Republicans but not against themselves.
That may be the political schemers' worst error this year.
White House habitués like spokesman Bob Gibbs are almost giggly over the O'Donnell win. They think she will be a pushover for their candidate in November. But then everyone thought she would be a pushover this time out.
Count among the losers in this primary season the party hacks in the White House who have misread the signals being sent by the truly disenchanted among the voters, a segment that is growing daily. They have, through their lack of political skill and the misuse and miscues of public relations, botched the Obama As Caring Leader campaign to the point that odds makers don't see him doing a repeat four years.
Before Tuesday, the Teas claimed successes chiefly in conservative states – Alaska, Kentucky and Utah – and in two swing states, Colorado and Kentucky.
We'll see what the full picture is when the final results of these semifinals are.
A winner, and not by default, is Sarah Palin. She backed O'Donnell, who gives her great credit for her long-shot win in Delaware. Palin emerges four years post-Bush as a political force, not the political farce she was as vice presidential candidate.
Up to Election Day, much of the campaigning will be devoid of any focus on critical current issues. Each party will hammer instead at personalities, with the president in charge of anti-Boehner and anti-Bush attacks, and the Republicans picking away at Obama, his mistakes, his lifestyle, and his background as presented in a vile, scurrilous book so far beneath contempt that neither its author nor its title nor its publisher will be named here.
Clawing for GOP leadership roles in this milieu are, most notably at the moment, McCain, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House who wants the country to adopt his old Compact With America and elect him president, despite his heavy load of negatives.
Gingrich is trying on the role of upfront politico who will tell it like it is. As in, the public should not trust the Republicans, but "loan them power" and be "very clear" that they expect the GOP to "control spending and change things."
Good. He wants the electorate to do what it's supposed to do.
Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty, whom many likened to Obama four years ago, is out, defeated by a moderate. Voters deemed Fenty too much the martinet.
In a city of 600,000, with 400,000 registered to vote, 100,000 did. That makes Vincent Gray, an advocate of conciliation, the chief executive-in-training of the city/district that has for years fought for statehood and, before that, the right to vote.
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C. |