Jim Vicevich gives us a couple of revealing clips from this morning’s Joe Scarborough show after Christine O’Donnell’s upset of Mike Castle in the Delaware Senate primary. Scarborough decides that the reason O’Donnell won was because her campaign used a Dunkin’ Donuts font on her signs, a remarkable observation from a man who can’t get the name on the signs right. He calls her “McDonald” twice in laying out his new political theory:

Somewhat more sanely, Mark Halperin calls the results not just “apocalyptic” but perhaps even “post-apocalyptic,” before reminding everyone that the Tea Party actually has a good record of producing viable candidates:

There’s a difference between northwest Florida and Delaware, but perhaps not as big as one might think. After all, O’Donnell got 54% of Republicans in her state to reject Mike Castle and his liberal policy positions, a fact that these analysts continue to miss.  Castle was hardly an unknown, and he had the full weight of the Republican Party in his corner, too.  Yet more than half of the supposedly moderate Republicans in Delaware, who the party insisted wouldn’t support a true conservative, deliberately chose O’Donnell and rebuked the GOP for pushing a liberal in this election cycle.

Is Delaware a more moderate state than Florida?  Yes.  Will it be harder for O’Donnell to win a general election than Castle?  Yes.  But it appears from the only poll that matters that the differences between the two have been overstated, and that the Republican Party missed a big opportunity to promote a candidate that actually believes in limited, smaller government for the Senate seat in Delaware.  We know that there had to be a few potential candidates, because 54% of the Republicans in Delaware just told the GOP that’s what they wanted all along.  And if they don’t start paying attention, that may be the apocalyptic development of this election.