By Ann Coulter
Washington elites heads exploded when Christine ODonnell won the Republican Senate primary in Delaware last week. Luckily they were all reading The New York Times op-ed page at the time so the mess their exploding heads created was minimal.
The establishments complaints are confusing. They say ODonnell has a problem because shes never held a job in the private sector (like our president) didnt pay her taxes (like our treasury secretary) and had her house foreclosed on (like half of the electorate).
They also accuse her of saying crazy things -- but shes running for Joe Bidens old seat so this may be an advantage.
This week all weve heard about is how ODonnell once said she went on a date with a guy in high school who claimed to be a witch. (So what? Bill Clinton married one!) Bill Clinton was credibly accused of at least one forcible rape. Those two seem about equal to you?
I havent seen hypocrisy like this since -- oh thats right since last week when CBSs Bob Schieffer attacked John Boehner for smoking after two years of the medias ferociously avoiding the topic of Obamas cigarette habit.
The Republican Party is being warned that tea party-endorsed candidates such as ODonnell might lead to Barry Goldwater-style epic defeats.
Of course the tea party candidates range from libertarian Rand Paul in Kentucky to Yale Law/Iraq War veteran Joe Miller in Alaska to Christian activist ODonnell. But any evidence of principle in a Republican is always treated by the elites as if its an embarrassing eccentricity best kept under wraps.
Referring to fringe candidates from the tea party Morton Kondracke wrote in Roll Call that Republicans are heading out of the mainstream and cited Goldwater as a disastrous precedent.
David Gergen said on CNN that the tea party candidates may be producing something like what we saw back the 1960s when the rise of Barry Goldwater seized power in the party back from the establishment took it but then went on to get a real drubbing in that 64 national election.
CNNs Gloria Borger also compared the tea party movements demand for ideological purity to the conservatives ill-fated nomination of Barry Goldwater.
As a one-off 46-year-old example Goldwater is like the Timothy McVeigh of conservative presidential candidates. But if Goldwater is going to keep being used as a boogeyman to scare conservatives lets at least get the history straight.
Ironically the elites also compared Reagan to Goldwater and predicted a devastating defeat for him in 1980. But Reagan didnt lose. He not only never lost an election he never won by less than a landslide. (You might say Reagans opponents suffered Goldwater-style defeats.)
So what was the difference between Goldwater and Reagan? Had the country changed that much in 16 years?
The social issues were the difference. Reagan agreed with Goldwater on fiscal and national defense issues but by 1980 social issues loomed large and Reagan came down mightily on one side -- the opposite side as Goldwater as it turned out.
Unlike abortion-loving Goldwater Reagan said We cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide.
And unlike gay-marriage-loving Goldwater Reagan said: Society has always regarded marital love as a sacred expression of the bond between a man and a woman. It is the means by which families are created and society itself is extended into the future. ... We will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality.
Goldwater may have been a thorough-going right-winger on national defense but -- unless L. Brent Bozell Jr. was writing it for him -- he never would have said this of the Soviets as President Reagan did: There is sin and evil in the world and we are enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might.
CNNs Borger contrasted Goldwater with Ronald Reagan by precisely reversing their differences claiming Reagan was probably the most secular president weve known in our lifetime.
Yes the man who called the Soviet Union an Evil Empire who wrote a book against abortion as a sitting president and who said that our governments founding documents speak of man being created of a creator that we are a nation under God -- thats the one Borger calls the most secular president weve known in our lifetime.
By most secular I gather she means most deeply religious.
Establishment Republicans are always telling Christian conservatives to put our issues aside because theyre not popular -- and then moderate Republicans go on to lose elections while conservative Republicans win in landslides. (Its almost as if the voters couldnt care less who David Brooks thinks they should vote for!)
As long as liberals are going to keep gleefully citing Goldwaters love of gay marriage and abortion his contempt for Christian conservatives and his statement that every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwells ass maybe they could ease up on blaming Christian conservatives for Goldwaters historic loss.
Goldwater wasnt our guy; Reagan was.
