Four months ago Sarah Palin bragged that her "mama grizzlies" would devour the Democrats in the fall elections and presumably beyond. Palin and her cubs haven't tasted any Democrats' flesh yet. But they have feasted on a few Republicans, and after the victory of Tea Party leaning senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell over GOP mainstream pick Mike Castle, Palin has proven again that she's the Democrat's best friend.
The GOP's closet game plan with Palin initially was to make her something akin to a rock superstar, get and keep the media swooning over her. And then trot her around to every nook and cranny in the Heartland whipping up pseudo populist anti-Obama hysteria among conservative, anti-government loathing blue collar and middle class whites.
Palin and the Tea Party's angry protests, marches, and parades, the passion, zealotry, their sloganeering, name calling, their anti-tax, anti big government, and defense of freedoms (code word: racism) boded well, initially. But things went off script with the GOP mainstream losses in Utah, Florida, Kentucky, Maine, and Alaska. And now that O'Donnell has bagged the Delaware senatorial nomination, after a bitter factional fight within the GOP over her candidacy, it has suddenly put the senate race in the state in play for the Democrats.
The Democrats are and should love every minute of this little off-color drama. Every word out of Palin's mouth piles the Democrat's anti-GOP ammunition dump higher. It took GOP leaders a while to recognize this but now they know that Palin and Tea Party activists will settle for nothing less than a full blown purge of any trace of moderation or compromise from the GOP.
The term RINO, Republican In Name Only, has slipped front and center into the public lexicon and now carries a frightening meaning and threat to the party. O'Donnell had a field day with the term, plastering it on Castle as King RINO. She and Palin happily reminded conservatives that he did the unthinkable and voted with the Obama administration in the House on cap and trade; the inference being that he and Republicans like him are fake conservatives who will sell-out to Obama and the Democrats every chance they get.
The danger looms for the GOP that 2010 could be 1964 all over again. That was the year that a right insurgency powered by ferocious Deep South and Western opposition to the civil rights movement, legislative and court ordered desegregation, and pending civil rights bills rammed the GOP to the hard right and in that year's presidential election, to political disaster. The GOP suffered mightily in the aftermath of LBJ and the Democrat's landslide sweep. But the crushing defeat did not totally transform the GOP into a hard core rightwing opposition party. There were many conservative Republicans who were still willing to compromise, conciliate, and work when necessary with Democrats.
Today, they're growing scarcer by the day. The great fear among party regulars is that the GOP could be a fractured, unhinged party months before the November showdown. Polls and surveys show this potentially chilling scenario. In a Pew survey in May, 40 percent of Democrats said they have no faith in their elected representatives in Congress. That's an all time low in the history of the Pew survey. The figure hasn't budged much since then. But even fewer Republicans say that they have any faith in their congressional representatives. That's a crushing load the GOP could drag into the fall elections. A pack of hard right candidates that carry the GOP banner will be a powerful turn-off to thousands of politically crucial independent voters. In past polls, many of them registered disgust, frustration and anger at Obama and the Democrat's policies and signaled a willingness to shift back to the GOP. This could be out the window.
Palin, of course, could see to that. If the party is seen as a party of extremists whose idea of governing is to bash, name call, obstruct, and whip up race and ethnic hatreds, it will be hard pressed to woo the frustrated and disenchanted independents it needs to realize its big dream of victory in November; the dream to take back at least the House.
Palin is the joker in the GOP deck in all of this. More endorsements of GOP rebels, especially endorsements that result in their victories or that spark brutal internal fights within the GOP and that goal could go poof. Thank Palin for that. She'd simply confirm that she's the Democrats' best friend.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
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