Pat Buchanan asks, "Is the Republican establishment losing it?"

Is the Republican establishment losing it?

Is the party leadership capable of uniting a governing coalition as Richard Nixon did before Watergate and Ronald Reagan resurrected in the 1980s?

Observing the hysteria and nastiness of Karl Rove and the GOP establishment at the stunning triumph of Tea Party Princess Christine O'Donnell, the answer is no.

This party is not ready to rule.

Consider. In its grand strategy to recapture a Senate that George W. Bush and Rove lost in 2006, the GOP Senate leadership endorsed all its own caucus members for re-election, if they chose to run, then picked out all its favorite candidates for the open and Democratic seats.

Conservatives and tea party activists, however, had other ideas. They began to pick their own candidates. And, again and again, the Senate's chosen were rejected in favor of tea party challengers who had the endorsement of Sarah Palin or South Carolina's Jim DeMint.

Arlen Specter was rejected by the Pennsylvania GOP and left the party. Rand Paul routed Sen. Mitch McConnell's man in Kentucky. Charlie Crist was challenged by Marco Rubio in Florida. Crist, too, departed. Sen. Bob Bennett was denied renomination in Utah. Sen. Lisa Murkowski lost her primary in Alaska to a little-known fellow named Joe Miller.

But Delaware was the stunner. Rep. Mike Castle, a former two-term governor who had been winning elections for 40 years, was a certain victor in November.

Challenger O'Donnell, however, ended all that.

Yet, though her conservative credentials are far superior to those of Castle, O'Donnell was made the object of a wilding attack by National Review and The Weekly Standard, Charles Krauthammer, who lashed out at Palin and DeMint for "irresponsbility," and Rove, who on Sean Hannity's show went postal as soon as the returns came in.

Now, on paper, O'Donnell is a far tougher sell in Delaware than is Castle. But her defeat is not certain. Not in this volatile year.

And what is the justification for the savagery of the attacks on her, from her own?

My take:

To answer Pat's question, it isn't just the ruling class Republicans who are unnerved by Christine O'Donnell's capture of the Senate nomination in Delaware. The ruling class political alchemists, such as Karl Rove, are in the same predicament.

What's the predicament? Furious that the federal government grows bigger, more powerful and more voracious through one presidency after another, grass roots voters rallied to the insurgent Tea Party and challenged party-anointed candidates, as Buchanan notes.

If this continues, political passion will replace the slicing and dicing that the well-paid Rove types practice for a living.

Journalists in Washington, especially, rely on the slicers and dicers for leaks, tips and advance word on new polls and findings of interest to news consumers who follow politics closely. In other words, other livelihoods also are at risk if the slicers and dicers lose their central place in the candidate selection and election process. 

The result is an all-out assault against Christine O'Donnell, whose smiling face represents a significant new threat to the slicers and dicers and their media allies.

As ruling class Republicans sulk, O'Donnell runs and Palin lurks

Here are some bedrock facts that received no shrift at all in the hullaballoo over Christine O'Donnell's decisive capture of the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Delaware.

Led by stalwarts such as Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer, a posse of writers for National Review and Senate Republican leaders, the anti-O'Donnell coalition came down squarely on the side of Mike Castle, whose RINO (Republican in Name Only) credentials are impeccable.

Castle, who is Delaware's sole representative in the House, even voted for the cap-and-trade bill, which, in the midst of a long and relentless recession, would have imposed new costs on American manufacturers and further reduced exports.

This is not vaporous economics. It is bedrock. Establishment Republicans preferred Castle, whose vote could, at some future date, enact cap-and-trade, a thinly conceived scam that would enrich corporations such as General Electric, which have bet the farm on a green future even though the scientific evidence underlying the green movement continues to fade toward irrelevance.

In other words, the Republican establishment was willing to gamble on a RINO who has signed on to a social engineering scheme whose purpose is to further empower government and force Americans to drive cars they don't want and live the way government bureaucrats say they should live.

Delaware's voters gave the ruling class Republicans the response they deserved. Her name is Christine O'Donnell. If the ruling class Republicans don't wise up soon, they will get another answer they won't like. Her name is Sarah Palin.

Republican establishment is at sea and a movement is afoot

It is not enough now to elect candidates who lean rightward of Obama. We need people who understand that trillion-dollar deficits and socialized medicine are not inconveniences. They are not annoyances. They are not setbacks. They are not unpleasantnesses. They are not regrettable episodes. They are not divergent views, odd turns, eccentricities. They are not even outrages and atrocities. THEY ARE IMPOSSIBILITIES.

Only candidates who understand that the only answer to "yes, we can" is "no, we cannot" are worth fielding. That is the whole point of sideswiping the political process with a third-party non-party wrecking crew who hold their teacups with monkey wrenches. The Republican establishment is asea and a movement is afoot. This is all coming to a head in November, when we will see who is really ahead and, derivatively, what lies ahead. (Plenty of lies ahead in the campaign, that’s for sure.)

The biggest winner of all is Sarah Palin, who has been tarred by our feathered friends as the ultimate in unelectable.

GOP establishment takes a drubbing; Karl Rove drubs himself

It was an amazing bit of television. Almost instantly followed by an amazing bit of scoop.

Mere minutes after Fox News had reported the victory of conservative activist Christine O'Donnell over Establishment Congressman Mike Castle in the Delaware GOP U.S. Senate primary, former Bush Deputy Chief of Staff and Fox News consultant Karl Rove was in place on Sean Hannity's TV show to analyze.

Or…well…something.

The normally rational and analytical Mr. Rove had vanished. In his place was someone who looked like Karl Rove, sounded like Karl Rove…but spoke like the last guy out of the hoped-for-victory-party of the landslide losing candidate for Register of Deeds in NoPlaceville, Texas.

What on earth was Rove thinking? He was bitter, angry, cutting, demeaning, mean-spirited…and those were the nice things he had to say about O'Donnell. It's as if the scene were 2000 and an aide to the just-beaten-by-George W. Bush Senator John McCain took to the Hannity show and said:

"Well, Bush has had a drinking problem, has p….ed off any number of friends, reporters and others with his drunk-as-a-sot rich boy behavior, and that doesn't count that everybody knows he's dumb as a post. Which is why they gave him that baseball team as a favor to his father, and he dodged time in Vietnam because his father had the whole thing fixed. So this victory will be a problem for Republicans. Not, Sean, that we're bitter over this loss."

I have no idea what Karl Rove was thinking when he sat down in front of the Fox cameras to speak with Hannity. But I know this.

All by himself Karl Rove has just given Christine O'Donnell a huge leg up on this election. In seconds he has made her look like what Americans absolutely love -- the underdog who has been unmercifully unfairly treated by the powerful and well-to-do. AKA: What we call here at The American Spectator the Ruling Class. Or, if you prefer, The Establishment.

And now, Carl Cameron of Fox News is reporting the National Republican Senatorial Committee will not be helping the official nominee of the Delaware Republican Party for the United States Senate in her Senate campaign.

So, in other words, having helped the losing incumbent Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, the losing incumbent Robert Bennett in Utah, swallowed hard at the victories of Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky, the NRSC will not be helping O'Donnell because she beat the pants off a liberal Establishment Republican Congressman?

If this is true, there is but one question:

Is the Republican Establishment suicidal?

Conservative O'Donnell leads liberal Castle in DE GOP primary

The Castle-O'Donnell Delaware Senate battle concludes tomorrow, perhaps not a moment too soon.

In a new poll by the folks at Public Policy Polling Conservative activist Christine O'Donnell is now leading liberal Republican Congressman Mike Castle 47-44, within the margin of error.

Conservatives are having a royal shoot'em up over this. The latest being a hit piece in the Weekly Standard by John McCormack smacking Christine O'Donnell over a lawsuit she filed against the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute.