Eugene Robinson: Democrats should take little comfort from GOP civil war

Not to spoil the fun, but Democrats shouldn't take the Republican Party's bitter internal warfare -- and the inexperienced, flaky candidates who've emerged from the fray -- as any kind of reassurance about November. Try as it might, the GOP probably can't defeat itself. Not this year, anyway.

I don't mean that the battle between the Republican establishment and the take-no-prisoners Tea Party insurgency is inconsequential. When Christine O'Donnell, a Tea Party favorite, won the Senate primary in Delaware on Tuesday, my first reaction was that this one result almost guarantees that the Democratic Party's majority in the Senate is safe.

On reflection, I think "almost guarantees" should be downgraded to something like "makes it likely." And in moments of existential despair, I fear that she might actually win.

Highly respected strategists in both parties have said that it's hard to imagine a scenario in which the GOP captures the Senate without the Delaware seat. The party establishment thought it had the perfect candidate in Mike Castle, a veteran congressman with moderate views. But the Tea Party movement staged an uprising, and a flood of out-of-state campaign money and volunteers delivered victory in the primary to O'Donnell -- whom the Republican establishment considers unelectable.

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