Mr. Geraghty, your 'Morning Jolt' column is the first new web column I've started reading since James Taranto's 'Best of the Web Today' in June 2001. I look forward to the two of you, plus Drudge, being daily reads from here on in.
Your Monday, September 13 “Battle Stations” column suggests some thoughts: You list 8 items of Christine O'Donnell's “questionable behavior”, from suing the ISI to how she paid $11,744.59 in back taxes, as being marks against her “judgment and character.”
Is there anything in that list that would directly indicate she might not have a 100% ACU rating?
You also point out that O'Donnell is “A three-time candidate never elected to any office [with] no record of managing or governing at any level.” As compared to a President, individual senators govern or manage no more than their personal conduct. Their senate vote is all that counts, the closer to the ACU line, the better. And one of those losses was to a 30-year senate incumbent, spending 10x as much as O'Donnell.
Representative Castle on the other hand has a 17 year 52.48 ACU rating , with a 28 in 2008. Given a 2001-like 50-50 split in the Senate with a Republican VP, who do you think would be more likely to pull a Jim Jeffords and switch parties between O'Donnell and Castle?
There's been talk of the so-called William F Buckley rule: “Vote for the Conservative who's most likely to win.” Did anyone get back to Mr. Buckley about that rule after Daniel Patrick Moinahan was elected to the senate?
Whatever, you will need to do lots worse than this to discourage me from reading 'Jolt' every day from now on.
Arnold H Nelson (alleged 50-year subscriber to NR)
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