Mike Castle and the Nutcases
Mike Castle's announcement that he is running for the Senate is the political story of the moment, and I suppose I have to weigh in on the subject or risk suspension of my license to blog.
Castle is portrayed as a moderate, which means he doesn't belong to the nutcase wing of the party. Castle gained notoriety when he was confronted at a now infamous town hall meeting by a woman waving her birth certificate in a plastic bag yelling about Barack Obama. Another speaker at the meeting insisted that the swine flu virus was engineered in "a small bioweapons plant outside of Fort Dix," and that a big vaccine company was "caught sending AIDS-infected vaccines to Africa." For a while, I and many others were wondering whether the experience, replayed endlessly on YouTube, would dissuade him from considering another campaign.
Castle incurred the wrath of the climate change deniers when he was one of eight Republicans who voted for the Waxman-Markey bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who is also running for the Senate, was another GOP yes vote.
Mike Castle's career dates back to the time when the state's greatest environmentalist, Russ Peterson, served as governor as a Republican. But Peterson was not elected for a second term after being challenged in a bitter primary in 1972, and eventually switched parties in the wake of the Gingrich uprising of 1994. Today the GOP eagerly continues to purge the party of environmentalists.
Christine O'Donnell declined to back down from challenging Castle. She has run in each of the last two elections as a social conservative, and is decidedly retrograde when it comes to energy and the environment. In last year's campaign, she offered the startling assertion that offshore drilling reduces pollution.
It's hard to see O'Donnell offering a serious challenge. Castle has a comfortable war chest, while she's still in debt from last year. Still O'Donnell might be a rallying point for the nuts who can't stand that a Republican would actually consider acting on global warming and refuse to question Obama's citizenship.
Castle is portrayed as a moderate, which means he doesn't belong to the nutcase wing of the party. Castle gained notoriety when he was confronted at a now infamous town hall meeting by a woman waving her birth certificate in a plastic bag yelling about Barack Obama. Another speaker at the meeting insisted that the swine flu virus was engineered in "a small bioweapons plant outside of Fort Dix," and that a big vaccine company was "caught sending AIDS-infected vaccines to Africa." For a while, I and many others were wondering whether the experience, replayed endlessly on YouTube, would dissuade him from considering another campaign.
Castle incurred the wrath of the climate change deniers when he was one of eight Republicans who voted for the Waxman-Markey bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who is also running for the Senate, was another GOP yes vote.
Mike Castle's career dates back to the time when the state's greatest environmentalist, Russ Peterson, served as governor as a Republican. But Peterson was not elected for a second term after being challenged in a bitter primary in 1972, and eventually switched parties in the wake of the Gingrich uprising of 1994. Today the GOP eagerly continues to purge the party of environmentalists.
Christine O'Donnell declined to back down from challenging Castle. She has run in each of the last two elections as a social conservative, and is decidedly retrograde when it comes to energy and the environment. In last year's campaign, she offered the startling assertion that offshore drilling reduces pollution.
It's hard to see O'Donnell offering a serious challenge. Castle has a comfortable war chest, while she's still in debt from last year. Still O'Donnell might be a rallying point for the nuts who can't stand that a Republican would actually consider acting on global warming and refuse to question Obama's citizenship.
posted by Tom Noyes at 7:04 PM
4 Comments:
One who is so squirrelly, must assume the nuts will find... her.
Not much moderate about Castle except for his claims and a bit of distance from the far right. We need to stop perpetuating the idea a man who voted to support the Bush regime and now votes in lockstep opposition to Obama is anything but a right wing Republican.
Peace.
I concur with Jerry. There is an almost laughable lack of red meat in this thar post, Tom.
His voting record in Congress should raise the hairs on any decent Democrat's neck.
Plus, there's plenty to indicate that Castle is going to be campaigning directly to the nutjobs as he did at the Christiana Hospital Town Hall and in Philly a week later.
http://delawareway.blogspot.com/2009/08/wnj-image-delawareliberal-has-great.html
http://delawareway.blogspot.com/2009/09/mike-castle-tells-fib-to-philly-crowd.html
http://delawareway.blogspot.com/2009/09/think-progress-reports-on-immigration.html
So I didn't show the requisite red meat when I pointed out that Mike Castle isn't nuts?
Just to be clear, a Republican doesn't have to be completely bonkers to still merit opposition. Being wrong on most of the issues is enough for me.
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