In all of the sturm und drang over the Christine O'Donnell win over Mike Castle in the Delaware GOP primary I wonder if anyone has mentioned perhaps the strongest reason not to have voted for the very liberal Mr. Castle.
People have noted that Mr. Castle is a credible threat to bolt the party once he got elected, but suppose his victory had given the Republicans 51 seats and thus the majority. He wouldn't have to defect to the Democrats in order to render the Republican advantage useless. All he'd have to do would be to threaten it, and he'd be holding the whole GOP caucus hostage to the Democrats' progressive agenda, an agenda which he largely supports.
The mere threat to switch parties, an act which would result in the Republicans losing their majority, and thus control, of the Senate would be enough to frighten his GOP colleagues into compromising and dithering where compromise and dithering were not necessary. What then would Republicans have accomplished by electing him to the Senate?
Christine O'Donnell has some ethical problems (although it's not clear how serious they are), but in an election like last Tuesday's what Republican voters need to ask is which candidate's votes in the Senate would be worse for the country? Here's a thought experiment for conservatives: Suppose Bill Clinton, a moderate-liberal with a lot of well-documented ethical shortcomings, were running against Barack Obama, a far-left radical, for the United States Senate. Which man should you vote for? I can't imagine any conservative answering that they would vote for Obama even if it were more likely that his election would produce a favorable majority in the Senate.
O'Donnell has nothing like the ethical baggage of Clinton, and she's more conservative. Mike Castle is pretty much an older version of Obama, at least in terms of his votes in Congress.
All things considered, it seems to me that Delaware Republicans made the right choice.
