After Volatile Primary Season, G.O.P. Faces New Test

[SecularMotion]

As the long and turbulent primary season of the midterm election campaign drew to a close on Monday, the Republican establishment was placing its confidence on hold and bracing for the prospect that voters in yet another state would send a message of defiance to party leaders in Washington.

The Senate primary in Delaware on Tuesday was prompting anxiety among party officials, who feared that a victory by Christine O’Donnell, a candidate backed by the Tea Party, could complicate Republican efforts to win control of the Senate. Republican leaders rushed to the aid of Representative Michael N. Castle, a moderate lawmaker and former governor, as internal party warfare — including accusations of a death threat — intensified on the eve of the primary.

“We need to prove to the Republican Party that we need to move it to the right, that we need to move back to good basic values and the Constitution,” said Lynn Brannon, a leading Tea Party activist in Delaware. “I will have a little bit of regret, but the Republicans need to learn their lesson: that we want things to go back to the right.”

It is a fitting end to an unusually volatile seven-month stretch of primaries that demonstrated in state after state that the discontent percolating in the electorate does not discriminate by political party.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/us/politics/14memo.html?_r=1&hp