Now where did I put those moderate Republicans?

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus had a puzzling reaction last week to the strange electoral developments in Delaware. The piece is entitled “Why Christine O’Donnell’s victory is scary.” Marcus is, based on the few things I’ve read by her, unimaginitively left/feminist, leading me and the average reader to guess that she will trot out a bunch of tired bullshit about frightening Tea Partiers, the coarsening of public debate, blah blah blah. But fortunately, it’s even wackier than that.
Let’s go to the tape:

Partisan Democrats are delighted about Christine O’Donnell’s Republican primary victory over Rep. Mike Castle in the race for the open Delaware Senate seat.
I’m despondent.
As I expected. I’m about to zip over to Thomas Boswell because I’m really not in the mood for more feminists bashing women they disagree with.
From the Democratic point of view, the defeat of the moderate, well-known Castle turns what had looked to be a lost cause into a likely win. Keeping the seat in Democratic hands could be the margin of control in the Senate. So the folks who focus on electing Democrats and keeping a Democratic majority can't be blamed for breaking out the champagne over O'Donnell's win.
Yes, this is the conventional wisdom. Some (many?) establishment Republicans lamented Castle’s loss because he seemed a good bet to win the general election. He was such a good bet, in fact, given the voters’ anti-Dem mood, that Beau Biden, the son of the logorrheic Vice President who formerly held the seat, had dropped out of the race to avoid an embarrassing loss in a solidly Democrat state.
Not me, for two reasons.
Ruth Marcus, neocon? That won’t go over well at the next bitching circle of The League of Women Voters.
First, I had thought the silver lining of this election year might be to produce a Senate with a more robust cadre of moderate Republicans.
Right. Well, I was picturing -- wait, in mid-September, when the rising tide of anti-Dem voter anger was starting to look like it might even take the Senate from them, you thought this would produce a bumper crop of moderate Republicans? I’m no political expert. I don’t have any fancy degree with capital and lower-case letters in it, just a humble blogger, but it seems obvious to me that in a lot of races across the country the voters are riding the pendulum to the right, after it had yawed wildly to the left to elect Obama.
That caucus has pretty much dwindled to the two senators from Maine, with very occasional company from colleagues such as Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown and departing Ohio Sen. George Voinovich. It's awfully hard for a caucus of two to break with the party.
There is no caucus of ‘moderate Republicans,’ just as there is no caucus of ‘conservative Democrats.’ There is, though, a caucus of ‘True Yankees,’ another of ‘winged unicorns’ and a really sketchy one of ‘stalkers of Fenster Ludge.’ Probably Mike Castle was about to join one of those, and Ruth Marcus was going to write a really bitchin’ article about it.
Peer pressure isn't just a phenomenon of middle school.
It’s a suffocating, distorting presence in the media to conform to the disdain of the Tea Party.
It's alive and well in the U.S. Senate, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has done a good job of keeping party discipline. A larger number of moderates among his herd of cats
I had a boss who made a joke about the difficulty of getting people to work together who described it as trying to herd cats. I had never heard that before, and I laughed out loud. It was around 1996. You, Ruth Marcus, should write a rom-com script.
might make that more difficult and enhance the prospects for bipartisan legislating. There is strength in numbers, and you could imagine a bolstered group of (at least relative) moderates made up of the likes of Castle, Carly Fiorina (Calif.), Mark Kirk (Ill.) or Dino Rossi (Wash.)
OK, I’m starting to (kind of) see her point. Which is, I think, that a GOP takeover of the House would be better (for liberals like Marcus and her fellow travelers in the media (Yes! Yes, goddammit, I called them fellow travelers. Sic the SPLC on me!)) if it included some wavering, not-really-Republican Republicans in the mix.
Now, it's as plausible to envision a bolstered Jim DeMint caucus, following the disturbingly powerful junior senator from South Carolina: Sharron Angle (Nev.), Rand Paul (Ky.), Ken Buck (Colo.) -- plus the two other incumbent-slayers of the primary season, Mike Lee in Utah and in Joe Miller in Alaska. Scary.
Sorry, Ruth, I don’t quite follow your reasoning here. Maybe it’s my lack of credentials, or the metastisizing tumor on my frontal lobe, but if you’re worried about bat-shit crazy conservatives seizing control of the Senate, how is it worse that an unelectable bat-shit crazy GOP nominee will lose in Delaware?
But not as scary as reason number two:
You’re not going to answer my question, which you couldn’t possibly be aware of? Abolish the Electoral College. Now.
the ripple effect of victories such as O'Donnell's on other Republican lawmakers. Republican members of Congress look at races such as those in Utah, Alaska and now Delaware and think: There but for the grace of the Tea Party
Tea Party=Sky God
go I. They will be that much more watchful of protecting their right flank against a primary challenge. They will be that much less likely to take a political risk in the direction of bipartisanship. In this sense, it matters less whether O'Donnell will win the general election -- that doesn't seem likely -- than that she won the primary.
The Delaware result might be good news for both Tea Partyers and Democrats. It is not good news for the cause of good government.
Sorry, Ruth, that’s a total non-sequitur. How does that affect the chances of good or bad government (outside of your narrow preferences?)
Did the Orioles win tonight? (Another non-sequitur, in case you were unclear on the concept.)