Chapter 6: Backlash from the Beltway
Chapter 6: Backlash from the Beltway
As part of my TEA Party +15 celebration I am serializing my 2019 book The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party. A chapter will appear each Tuesday until the 15th anniversary on February 27, 2024.
“Democrats like to blame the Tea Party for everything because it satisfies their conviction that the GOP is captive to extreme interests; the Republican establishment does so because it allows elites to evade blame for the party’s electoral and philosophical failures.” - Molly Ball, writing in The Atlantic, March 19. 2014.
As the TEA Party's fortunes waxed, the rest of the nation found out the movement's collective angst wasn't just over the economic situation and the prospect of higher taxes, but also a frustration with how things had moved so quickly in that direction. Part of the reason for the fast pace of events was a once-in-a-generation shift in political fortunes that was benefiting Barack Obama and his fellow progressive Democrats.
After the 2008 election votes were counted, not only was Obama elected President but the Democrats expanded their Senate dominance as well. Going into the 2008 election, the body was deadlocked 49-49 between the two parties, but the two independents in the Senate – Al Gore's 2000 Democratic vice-Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and future presidential aspirant Bernie Sanders of Vermont – caucused with the Democrats to give them a working majority.1 While Barack Obama was elected without a lot of suspense, his coattails were lengthened by a candidate atop the GOP ticket who didn't motivate the base in John McCain and the unpopularity of Republicans in general. Add in the fact the GOP was defending 23 of the 35 seats contested in 2008, and it was a deadly combination for the conservatives – conditions that resulted in an eight-seat Senate gain for Democrats. The immediate results from the November election made the margin 56-41 in their favor (with one seat remaining in contention) and adding the two independents pushed the bulge to 58-41.
Then in April, 2009 Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, asserting that “I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,” announced he was switching parties.2 Specter's switch pushed the Democrats to a 59-40 edge, just one seat short of the 60-seat majority they needed to avoid cloture and ramrod any portion of the Obama agenda they desired through on a straight party-line caucus vote. They finally received this supermajority when Senator Al Franken of Minnesota was sworn in July 7 after a bitterly contested election, sullied by accusations of voter fraud, was finally confirmed eight months later by the state's Supreme Court.3
Meanwhile, after taking over the House in 2006 following a dozen years of GOP control, the Democrats picked up another 21 seats in 2008. President Obama's initial popularity even allowed the Democrats, who began the 111th Congress with 256 seats, to win several special elections during the first few months of his term and reach 258 seats – a high-water mark they hadn't achieved since 1992. The aforementioned elections of Bill Owens in New York and John Garamandi in California in November, 2009 pushed the Democrats to that point (and finally filled all the vacant seats) although they lost a seat in Hawaii a few months later when Republican Charles Djou won a special election to replace Neal Abercrombie, a Democrat who resigned to concentrate on his run for governor later that year. Overall, the net results of several special elections over the span of the Congressional term left the Democrats entering the 2010 midterm election with the 57-41 Senate lead (along with the two independents, Lieberman and Sanders, that caucused with them) and a 255-178 House margin (with two vacancies.)
In 2010, there were 37 elections slated for the Senate: 34 regular elections as the class of Senators elected in 2004 were completing their terms, and three special elections to complete unexpired terms scheduled for Delaware, New York, and West Virginia. Out of those three, only New York incumbent appointee Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was standing for election to finish her term, as Gillibrand replaced Hillary Clinton when she was appointed Secretary of State. (The other two appointees, Ted Kaufman of Delaware and Carte Goodwin of West Virginia, declined to run for the remainder of their respective terms.) As I alluded to earlier in this book, this election was held at a period of time when Democratic political strategist James Carville was predicting another long period of dominance for his party.
Traditionally in the postwar period, a new President has learned to expect his party will lose ground in Congress at the initial midterm election as the post-inauguration honeymoon wears off and the opposition learns where the President's policies have the weakest amount of support. Beginning with Dwight Eisenhower's first midterm election in 1954, where his Republican Party lost control of the House for what would end up being a 40-year run concluding with Bill Clinton's first midterm in 1994, the party in the White House lost House seats in their first midterm election all but one time: in 2002, Republicans gained eight House seats and one Senate seat under President George W. Bush in the first balloting after the 9/11 attacks. On average, the President's party suffered a 25-seat loss, although the two largest losses that skewed the average came with Democratic presidents: Lyndon Johnson lost 48 House seats in 1966 and Bill Clinton lost 54 in 1994. Conversely, the Senate was more mixed in its results because so much depended on the partisan makeup of the available seats – in 2010 Democrats would be defending 19 seats and Republicans 18.
Given that information, pundits were probably correct early on in assuming the Democrats would maintain control for another two years, although the majorities Barack Obama enjoyed would be thinner in the second half of his term. What happened instead was one of the most contentious midterm elections in some time.
As I pointed out a couple chapters ago, the election of Scott Brown in January, 2010 put the Left and Democrats on notice that this midterm would not be a cakewalk of a campaign for them. Conservatives and Republicans were just as motivated by opposition to the Obama agenda as liberals and Democrats were previously spurred into action by an unpopular war, Congressional scandal, and a failing economy in 2006 and 2008. Now that the TEA Party was a proven political force and had won and lost elections depending on the degree they could influence the electorate, the 2010 GOP primary season took on additional importance.
With their newfound political muscle and a distrust of Washington insiders and candidates deemed to be too moderate, TEA Party activists jumped into races up and down the political ladder. We all know what happened on Election Day in 2010: Republicans surged back into the House majority by smashing the pre-election expectations of perhaps adding 40 to 50 seats4 and securing a bare majority5 by eventually adding an astounding 63 seats to their total. But Republican leaders bemoaned missed opportunities in the Senate, where six seats were won but ten were needed to provide a Senate majority for the GOP once again. In their postmortem, pundits6 and unnamed “Republican leaders and strategists” placed the blame for falling short of a majority on TEA Party-backed candidates in four states: Colorado, Delaware, Nevada, and West Virginia.7 GOP Chair Michael Steele, who eventually lost his chairmanship after the election, conceded there was a risk in allowing voters to select nominees.
All four of these candidates – Ken Buck in Colorado, Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada, and John Raese in West Virginia – were winners in their respective Republican primaries, but victory there came more easily for some than others. Raese handily won his primary over a large cast of otherwise barely-known characters, but the other three took their spots over more established candidates preferred by national party leadership.
And arguably the West Virginia race was the most difficult one for Republicans to win: Raese was somewhat of a perennial candidate who had lost previous Senate races against longtime fixtures Jay Rockefeller and Robert Byrd. Going out of the frying pan and into the fire, for this third bid Raese was going up against term-limited Governor Joe Manchin, who had just won re-election overwhelmingly two years earlier. But the race was close going into the last few weeks, with the one major charge from Democrats being that Raese's wife was a registered voter in Florida – evidence to them that Raese was trying to avoid West Virginia taxes.8
Yet it was two commercials that turned the tide against Raese and for Manchin, neither of which Raese had a direct hand in.
In October, it was learned that an anti-Manchin commercial sponsored by the National Republican Senatorial Committee used actors who were supposed to emote a “hicky” demeanor and appearance.9 It allowed Manchin's campaign to continue the Florida claim as well, noting “it only proves that John Raese has spent too much time in the state of Florida, living in his Palm Beach mansion and doesn’t know, understand or respect the great people of this state, and what we stand for.” Raese's argument that Democrats were trying to “deceive” voters because that he had nothing to do with the commercial (since it was an independent expenditure by the NRSC) fell on deaf ears.10
More important, though, was a spot that drew nationwide attention:11 12 Manchin's “Dead Aim” commercial.13 In his effort to distance himself from a President who was deeply unpopular in his state, Governor Manchin played up his opposition to several of Obama's policies, particularly Obamacare and the proposed cap-and-trade system. The spot worked well because not only could Manchin tout his NRA endorsement but because he literally blew a hole in the cap-and-trade bill – a powerful visual image. Even a pro-Raese rally a couple weeks later featuring noted hunter (and rock singer) Ted Nugent14 couldn't move the needle back in Raese's favor.
Polls showed Raese and Manchin trading the lead until the last two weeks of the campaign, but in the end the governor's name recognition and presentation of his significant shift to the right of common Democratic party orthodoxy allowed him to prevail by 10 points over Raese. In the end, there wasn't a whole lot the TEA Party could be blamed for, although it could be credited for making Manchin campaign to a position well to the right of most Democrats nationally. And while West Virginia Republicans didn't elect Raese, they managed to pick up one of three House seats in the state, putting themselves at an advantage in the delegation for the first time since a brief period in the 1940s.
In Colorado, Ken Buck was a former U.S. attorney who had run for and won the office of District Attorney in Weld County, a county which spans the region between the outskirts of Denver and the state's borders with Nebraska and Wyoming. His main primary opponent was former lieutenant governor Jane Norton, whose experience also included work as a regional director of the federal Department of Health and Human Services under Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush and a short stint in the Colorado House. In a method relatively unique to Colorado politics, Buck was placed on the ballot by the state's Republican convention while Norton eschewed the convention and petitioned her way into the running.15
Despite the TEA Party embrace of Buck, though, he didn't seem comfortable with being lumped with them. Early on, he was caught on tape wishing someone would “tell those dumbasses at the TEA Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I'm on the camera?”16 Shortly after the primary win, Buck made it known that he “resisted” the TEA Party label, preferring to be known as a candidate of the grass roots.17
As a first-time candidate on a major stage, Buck quickly had to learn that every word he spoke was important because chances were someone would be filing it away for future reference. Early on, he assumed honesty was the best policy when it came to beating the press, stating to Politico:
"The only way for me to get my message out and for people to understand who Ken Buck is and that I'm not the person being portrayed by [Democratic National Committee Chairman] Tim Kaine or Michael Bennet is for me to be very open. And I will answer every question," he said.
"Does it look like I'm afraid of you?" Buck added, chuckling.18
Indeed, Buck survived a pre-primary exchange with opponent Norton where he stated, “Why should you vote for me? Because I don't wear high heels.” He then stepped in it further: “She questioned my manhood. I think it's fair to respond. I have cowboy boots. They have real bullshit on them. That's Weld County bullshit, not Washington D.C. bullshit.”19 All that was fodder for a later Norton commercial20 and ended up helping to define Buck's campaign.
Regardless of his willingness to answer questions, the media was bound and determined to push Buck away from the economic issues he'd hoped to run on and into the realm of social conservatism. Just weeks before the election came another “gotcha” question on a Meet The Press debate with appointed incumbent Senator Michael Bennet regarding whether being gay is a choice. “I think that birth has an influence over it, like alcoholism and some other things,” said Buck, “but I think that basically, you have a choice.”21 Naturally, the Left howled because it had another scalp.22 And while he tried to clarify his remarks by stating “I wasn't talking about being gay as a disease,”23 the timing was not good for his campaign, and the reaction to his misstatements became known locally in the Denver Post as “Buckpedaling.”24
Coverage of these statements in the local and national media took Buck off his message, which was otherwise a fairly conservative one. As described in a postmortem by Jason Salzman at the Colorado Pols blog:
In assessing his Senate bid after his loss, Buck told The Denver Post that Democratic trackers recorded video of him at 600 public appearances and took his words out of context.
A review of his statements, however, shows that videotapes of Buck mostly illuminated straight-forward policy positions that voters in the general election, as opposed to conservatives in the GOP primary, found disagreeable.
Many of the videos that hurt Buck weren’t shot by his opponents at all, but by his supporters, eager to spread the word about Buck’s ultra-right conservative views.
The statements that damaged Buck in these videos for the most part weren’t gaffes but policy statements, which may never have come to light had they not been recorded on the campaign trail.
Video clips showed Buck telling various conservative audiences that Social Security is a “horrible policy,” the Veterans Administration and big chunks of the federal government should be privatized, and the Department of Education abolished. He also questioned the federal separation of church and state and the federal student loan program.
One clip aired repeatedly in TV ads showed Buck telling a Tea Party group during the primary: “I am pro-life, and I’ll answer the next question. I do not believe in the exceptions of rape or incest.”
The passion in his voice on the video contrasted with his statements later that he wasn’t campaigning on social issues, like abortion.25
Because Buck barely lost his 2010 bid for the Senate, he planned on making another one for 201426 before changing his mind27 and successfully winning Colorado's open Fourth Congressional District House seat, a position he still holds today. So while the GOP may not have preferred Buck in that particular Senate race, they didn't mind him trying it again for a lesser office four years later. (Buck's decision was assisted by the fact his Congressman was the one seeking the Senate seat, which left the House position as an open seat in a heavily Republican-leaning district. All Buck needed to do to prevail in the Fourth was to survive the primary.)
Not so much with Nevada's Sharron Angle. While the Republican establishment was thrilled with the prospect of beating longtime incumbent and Senate leader Harry Reid thanks to the interest placed in the race by the TEA Party, they would have preferred to see longtime State Senator Sue Lowden win the nomination. Lowden, though, was hamstrung by a few unfortunate comments herself, especially one where she suggested a return to paying for health care through the barter system.28 With Lowden's campaign tanking at the same pace as that of original GOP frontrunner Danny Tarkanian – son of the longtime UNLV basketball coach and a perennial candidate – Angle, who previously served in the State Assembly for eight years before making a fruitless bid for Congress in 2006, was the last one standing from a crowded primary ballot.
Angle, though, also had the tendency to put her foot into her mouth. Some of her best-known misstatements: calling the $20 billion BP put into a fund for Gulf oil spill victims a “slush fund,”29 recounting how she advised teenagers who became pregnant “that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade,”30 and telling Latino students that some of them looked more Asian.31 Against a seasoned politician like Harry Reid and a media very willing to amplify everything which could be construed to be outside the mainstream that TEA Party-backed candidates said, Angle's explanations after the fact were basically ignored. Her biggest issue, as told to the Washington Times by Nevada-based political consultant Ryan Erwin, was that, “(Angle) walked into this race with very low name ID. She’s now been defined by Harry Reid and now she has to redefine herself.”32
Angle also had the unique problem of having to run against the “Tea Party.” Nevada's relatively lax laws on party formation (paperwork and 250 signatures) allowed Scott Ashjian, the owner of a paving business, to create the Tea Party of Nevada and qualify for the 2010 Senate ballot33 even though no one connected with the real TEA Party in Nevada had ever heard of him.34 Ashjian didn't turn out to be a serious contender, as he had negligible financial support and a number of personal and financial issues during his campaign,35 but the usage of the name was enough to perhaps confuse a few voters. (Eventually even the Tea Party of Nevada's chairman switched his support to Angle.)36
What gave the Washington establishment more heartburn than anything, though, was the so-called “extreme” positions Sharron was taking. (“Extreme” being defined as more in line with Constitutional principles, as I'll reveal in due course.) Yet Angle seized the lead in pre-election polling from October on, which made Reid's eventual five-point victory a surprise to many observers. They failed to consider the “turnout machine”37 Reid had built up over the years – a group that pollsters obviously missed.
After losing to Reid, Angle unsuccessfully vied for the Senate again in 2016, falling in the GOP primary, and lost a bid to unseat Rep. Mark Amodei in the 2018 Republican primary.
Finally, we have Christine O'Donnell, the candidate who drew the most establishment Republican ire. Her sin: beating a candidate who the pundits expected would flip a Senate seat from Delaware to GOP hands for the first time since William V. Roth, Jr. retired after the 2000 election.
With the three aforementioned candidates having already won their primaries – and Angle and Buck running into trouble on the campaign trail – Beltway Republicans had plenty of reason to feel that they needed a sure thing, and they assumed Delaware Republican voters would see this and vote accordingly in one of the nation's final primary elections. (Delaware held its Senate primary just seven weeks before the general election, on September 14.)
Instead, O'Donnell defeated the longtime moderate House member Michael Castle for the GOP nomination. Castle, whose 18 years in the House weren't even the capstone to his political career – he was the state's governor for two terms immediately preceding his election to Delaware's lone House seat – seemed early on to be the favorite to land a cushy Senate job to finish up a political career that began back in 1966 when he was first elected to the Delaware House of Representatives. In respect to the “Delaware Way” of recycling officeholders to different positions,38 O'Donnell was the only primary opponent Castle had and she was fresh off a loss in the 2008 election for that same seat to Joe Biden, who was allowed by Delaware law to be on the ballot for both Senate and Vice-President. (It was Biden's resignation which made the special Senate election necessary.)
But Castle's moderate stance on issues – his American Conservative Union lifetime rating was a modest 52 in 2009, the last year it was determined39 – was anathema to TEA Party voters, and it was those Republican activists in the rural southern part of the state who turned out in just enough numbers to push O'Donnell over the top.40
Christine O'Donnell had two strikes against her from the get-go. First of all, she was carrying a lot of baggage from her futile 2008 effort, for which she reportedly claimed to have won two of Delaware's three counties. (She lost all three, although in the rural conservative stronghold of Sussex County Christine lost by just 272 votes out of over 86,000 cast.)41 Fallout from that 2008 campaign also allowed other rumored anomalies regarding both her political accounting and personal money management skills to become issues in 2010 – by the end of the primary season, the Delaware state GOP was in open revolt against the O'Donnell campaign to the extent they were running commercials overtly asking state Republicans to back Michael Castle.42
The second big sin, according to the Delaware Republican Party, was the $250,000 donation she received from the Tea Party Express. That brought accusations of campaign coordination and a complaint to the Federal Election Commission from the state party against one of its own candidates.43 Sarah Palin could endorse whoever she wanted, but to the Delaware GOP all that national money from an insurgent organization was a bridge too far – especially one that dropped both a pro-O'Donnell and anti-Castle commercial spot, the latter urging Delaware Republicans to “defeat liberal Mike Castle.”44
Nor did O'Donnell make a good impression on at least one important Republican pundit. “I've met her. I wasn't frankly impressed by her abilities as a candidate,” said Karl Rove to a disbelieving Sean Hannity as the Delaware results rolled in. “We were looking at eight to nine seats in the Senate. We are now looking at seven to eight in my opinion,” Rove concluded.45
So it goes without saying that the establishment in Delaware's Republican Party woke up the morning after the primary and had a collective coronary about the results. And while O'Donnell had an uphill battle to begin with, the four words that eventually did her effort in were uttered in a commercial quickly mocked around the country: “I'm not a witch.”46 Her “dabbling” in witchcraft as a young lady – which consisted of a brief dating relationship with a boy who was into such dark arts – was the last straw for Delaware voters, who rejected her on Election Day. At least this time she indeed won two of the state's three counties.47
With these 2010 losses fresh in mind, some experts worried about the TEA Party's effect on the 2012 Presidential election. “They are going to try to have a tremendous impact on the Republican side," said well-regarded political expert Larry Sabato. "They are going to try to pick the nominee. The problem of course is that the Tea Party is well to the right. It is further to the right than the country, there is simply no question about that.”48
But were they really? In a research project of this size – and after all, a book like this takes a lot of study – it's easy to discern that much of the source material on these races came from outlets with an agenda not in line with the candidate's. However, in the aftermath of their campaigns, both Angle and O'Donnell wrote books to explain What Happened (with apologies to Hillary Clinton.) In the biography she penned in the wake of the 2010 election, Right Angle: One Woman's Journey To Reclaim The Constitution,49 Sharron Angle spelled out the reasons for having the platform that she had.
Drastic measures must be taken to stop these politicians in their tracks. Does this mean a revolution is in order? No, I am simply saying the American people can replace corrupt, weak, and self-interested politicians by raising the standard to that which proclaimed liberty in 1776. The 'Silent Majority' can be silent no longer. We do not have the option or the luxury to sit on the sidelines. Transition means a grassroots movement with grassroots leadership.50
Angle also praised the TEA Party movement as a necessary ingredient in enacting her vision:
The TEA Party movement is Main Street America fighting for freedom in peaceful assembly that would make Martin Luther King, Jr. proud…51
I am conveying that there is a very real awakening of the populace who are trying to communicate with the elite, unresponsive, and arrogant centralized ruling class. It is time for this ruling class to clear their ears, listen to their constituents, take these good Americans seriously, and get a grasp on the level of frustration permeating this great country of ours…
The TEA Party protests are an outpouring of the fear that our country is being lost to the corruption of political greed and lust. The best solution is not to overthrow the government but to dismantle repressive laws that have fostered corruption and then enforce the laws designed to prevent it.52
In other words, her being at times what she jokingly referred to as “41 to Angle” for being the lone vote against a bill in the 42-seat Nevada Assembly was the proof that she would stand on principle if elected to the United States Senate, and her agenda was that of a follower of the Constitution. Written just after her 2010 campaign, Right Angle is both postmortem and political platform for future races that she indeed ran in subsequent elections.
On the other hand, O'Donnell and her book Trouble Maker: Let's Do What It Takes To Make America Great Again53 (shades of the later Trump campaign) was less of a political agenda and more a telling of her side of the story regarding the 2010 Senate race as well as addressing the allegations of embellishing her college records, fiscal irregularities with her 2008 campaign, and other issues brought up in the wake of her upset victory over Mike Castle. Her story wasn't so much of a backlash from the Beltway – although the national GOP was as shocked by the results as their state counterparts in Delaware were, they at least assisted the O'Donnell campaign – as it was an indictment of her state party. “I think at least for the party in Delaware, the Republican leadership in Delaware,” O'Donnell said in a later interview with Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, “they would rather control the way they lose than lose control of their party.”54
But a state party is supposed to be an extension of the national leadership, and while the TEA Party had given the GOP good results in the 2010 midterms establishment Republicans echoed the sentiments of Larry Sabato: skittish that TEA Party-influenced voters would select a presidential contender in 2012 who was perceived to be outside the mainstream like Angle, Buck, O'Donnell, or Raese were made out to be.
The 2010 election season illustrates a good point about where the TEA Party eventually failed. At a time when they had the bully pulpit and could take advantage of having an unpopular President and Congress, they ran against both bodies. Opposition is all well and good in terms of comparison and contrasting – and they got a lot of mileage out of opposing Barack Obama for seven years – but once the dog finally caught the car in 2016 the TEA Party had faded as a political force, as many of their staunchest supporters early on grew tired of the excuses.
Even before the initial spring 2009 rallies when what would become the TEA Party banner was being carried by the libertarians of the political world, true believers in the cause were making the attempt to not just oppose government but also present a vision of what they would do if the reins of power were handed over to them. When people have been inculcated with the perceived benefits of an all-encompassing, overly powerful government for an entire lifetime, they need to be educated on the benefits of liberty before they can be trusted with selecting appropriate leadership to maximize what the Constitution guaranteed to them. It was why the renewal of interest in our founding documents was just the first step in what should have been a series of lessons.
People go with what they know, and it's no secret that Americans want more of whatever makes life easiest for them as individuals. Most would agree with the primary TEA Party message that they themselves are being overtaxed, but there's a whole different political movement which depends on the notion that certain income levels should pay a larger “fair share” of their income to the tax man than others. It's telling that one party always focuses their tax-cutting efforts toward the “middle class” yet the TEA Party ignored the modest tax cut which was part of Obama's stimulus55 because it came with a truckload of spending and debt that same party also embraced.
Yet many members of the TEA Party were also foursquare with government spending and debt when it came to certain other aspects of their lives like Medicare and Social Security. (I'm going to return to this disconnect at far more length in a later chapter, let me assure you.) Politicians, who then as now wanted most of all to be re-elected, were quick to advocate for “reform” of these entitlements rather than their eventual replacement – even if that was at odds with the principles of limited government – because TEA Partiers had always known these entitlements and expected to receive them when they reached retirement age because they “paid into the system” and were “promised” the money. (The average beneficiary receives far more than they paid into the system, though.)56
So soon enough the Republicans discovered that they could promise people the moon as long as they were still in the opposition. Frame that in your mind as you consider what comes next: with the dawning of 2011 and the changing of the guard in the House from outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Republican choice John Boehner, those who believed in the TEA Party principles were ready for a robust fight against the Obama agenda. That optimism didn't last very long, though.
Notes - bearing in mind some of these links may now be dead ones:
1 https://www.senate.gov/history/partydiv.htm
2 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/28/arlen-specter-switching-p_n_192298.html
3 http://www.nbcnews.com/id/31778598/ns/politics-capitol_hill/t/after-long-wait-franken-sworn-senator/#.WKfjt4WcGM8 Franken had fewer votes on election night, but absentee ballots counted during a controversial recount process pushed him ahead. He won by 312 votes out of nearly 2.9 million cast.
4 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-bafumi/a-forecast-of-the-2010-ho_b_697051.html
5 https://web.archive.org/web/20100918094638/http://www.npr.org/elections2010/scorecard/
6 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/did-the-tea-party-cost-republicans-the-senate/
9 http://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/gop-ad-casting-call-hicky-wva-look-043254
10 http://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/john-raese-thinks-were-hicks-043363
11 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/democrat-joe-manchin-takes-dead-aim-at-health-care-cap-and-trade/
12 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/11/joe-manchin-ad-dead-aim_n_758457.html
13
14 http://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/nugent-to-stump-for-raese-044128
15 http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2010/04/13/norton-petitions-onto-gop-ballot/8376/
17 http://www.politico.com/story/2010/08/can-he-buck-the-system-041023
18 Ibid.
19 http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2010/12/the_ghost_of_gaffes_past.html
20 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gop-rivals-jane-norton-ken-buck-fight-over-high-heels-and-manhood/
23 https://www.mediaite.com/online/ken-buck-on-mtp-homosexuality-is-a-choice-similar-to-alcoholism/
24 http://www.denverpost.com/2010/10/14/michael-bennet-for-u-s-senate/ As you'll note, the Denver Post endorsed Bennet.
26 http://www.denverpost.com/2013/08/09/ken-buck-embarks-on-u-s-senate-run-despite-2010-baggage/ Once you get baggage in the eyes of the Left you'll always carry it.
27 http://www.rollcall.com/rothenblog/why-ken-buck-has-the-inside-track-in-colorado-4th-district/
28 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sue-lowden-stands-by-chicken-health-care-barter-plan/
29 http://swampland.time.com/2010/07/08/sharron-angles-latest-gaffe/
30 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/08/sharron-angles-advice-for_n_639294.html
32 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/16/a-race-of-he-who-gaffes-last-in-nevada/
33 https://lasvegasweekly.com/news/2010/aug/19/incredibly-true-bizarre-story-scott-ashjian-and-35/
34 http://www.nevadaappeal.com/news/opinion/chuck-muth-scott-ashjian-tea-party-crasher/
36 https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/tea-party-of-nevada-head-ditches-ashjian-backs-angle/
37 http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/18/sen-harry-reids-turnout-machine/
38 http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/16/crowded-primary-elections/90415558/ After Castle was first elected to the Delaware House, he quickly moved up to their Senate for eight years before serving as lieutenant governor for a term, then governor for just short of two terms – he resigned a few weeks early to join the House. As of the 2010 election, Castle had spent 40 of the previous 44 years in political office, with the other four in private law practice.
39 http://acuratings.conservative.org/acu-federal-legislative-ratings/?year1=2009&chamber=11&state1=21&sortable=1 Castle's 2010 rating was just 38, which would have dragged his lifetime score even closer to 50.
40 https://elections.delaware.gov/archive/elect10/elect10_Primary/html/stwoff_kns.shtml
41 https://elections.delaware.gov/archive/elect08/elect08_general_election/html/elect08_gen_KWNS.shtml
43 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/opinion/11collins.html
44 http://www.teapartyexpress.org/date/2010/09 The site has a link to both ads, which are still available for viewing. There's nothing special or groundbreaking about them.
45 https://www.politico.com/story/2010/09/rove-odonnell-said-nutty-things-042205
47 https://elections.delaware.gov/archive/elect10/elect10_General/html/stwoff_kns.shtml Unfortunately for O'Donnell, the county she lost cast over 60% of the ballots – New Castle County includes the city of Wilmington and is home to a majority of Delaware's population and voters.
49 This 2011 autobiography was self-published through the Author House imprint.
50 Sharron Angle: Right Angle: One Woman's Journey to Reclaim the Constitution, (Bloomington, Indiana: Author House, 2011). p. xi.
51 Right Angle, p. 11.
52 Right Angle, p. 31.
53 Christine O'Donnell: Trouble Maker: Let's Do What It Takes To Make America Great Again (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2011).
54 Trouble Maker, p. 258. Considering the state party has won only one statewide race since (down-ballot for treasurer, a seat lost four years later) this philosophy may still hold true.
55 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/us/politics/19taxes.html. The “Making Work Pay” credit generally came in the form of less backup withholding – see https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/the-making-work-pay-tax-credit – but sometimes required the addition of another tax form, Schedule M – see https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/claim-the-making-work-pay-tax-credit-on-your-tax-return-with-schedule-m.
Next Tuesday will continue my series with Chapter 7: The Fleeting Taste of Success.
In the meantime, you can buy the book or Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now. And remember…
Thanks for reiterating history. I forgot, for example, how Arlen "sphincter" switched parties and Al Frankin's rigged election. The battle never ends!