It’s possible to be highly ambivalent about Christine O’Donnell (Karl Rove isn’t ambivalent), and still be put off by the eruption of snobbery that has greeted Ms. O’Donnell’s upset victory in Delaware’s Republican primary. The Snob Brigade is giddy.
It’s this contempt (see “Nation of Dodos”) that turns off many voters-many of them educated men and women who are being dismissed as yahoos not because they lack education but because they embrace small government. So the crowing and mockery over Ms. O’Donnell’s surprising win may turn out to be her greatest asset. (A piece in the Wall Street Journal hails the odds as tough but not impossible for O’Donnell.)
People who ordinarily might be appalled by somebody who had her house foreclosed (as Ms. O’Donnell reportedly did) may suddenly be more turned off by the disdain of the elites for somebody who, now that she’s under attack from the Snob Brigade, comes across as just somebody who’s been through an ordinary financial setback. (And, hey, didn’t the government see fit to take our taxpayer money to bail out some people going through this very trauma?)
Another thing in O’Donnell’s favor: the public’s fear of profligate government spending. Daniel Henninger doesn’t address the O’Donnell race today, but he does talk about disgust with spending in a must-read article headlined, “It’s the Spending, Stupid.”