Via Blue Hen Conservative, we find out there is (well…WAS…) a debate scheduled for 7 pm EST tonight in Cokesbury Village, Delaware Sponsored by a Newark-based educational group called Founders Values who joined with Smart Girl Politics to host this United States Senate candidates debate between the 4 main players in the race to replace Joe (yep, foot-in-mouth US Vice President) Biden’s old seat.

According to Blue Hen:

[T]he 4 declared U.S. Senate candidates were invited. Christine O’Donnell, a conservative Republican candidate for U.S. Senate who is challenging Congressman Mike Castle for the right to run against New Castle County Executive Chris Coons (Democrat) and Libertarian candidate Jim Rash in the general election.

As the story goes, a location, date, and time had been secured. Certified letters were sent to all of the candidates, and there is proof the letters were indeed picked up. Only Christine O’Donnell and the Libertarian candidate Jim Rash responded right away, saying that they would attend. Coons (Democrat) and Castle (essentially Democrat) did not. Apparently, the hall location would not hold the debate without at least 3 of the candidates… so you can figure out from here how this went down.

Earlier this week debate organizers were forced to cancel the event since neither Castle nor Coons had agreed to attend. Today…the day OF the debate, organizers received the following email from Mike Castle (R in name only) [emphasis mine]:

From: Danielle Varallo [mailto: dvarallo@castleforsenate.com]
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2010 3:58PM
Subject: Founders Values Event

Dear [redacted],
This was placed in the mail yesterday, and we wanted to make sure you had received a copy. See attached letter.

Thanks,
Danielle
–
Danielle Varallo
Mike Castle for U.S. Senate

Here’s a link to an image of the letter Castle’s office sent (dated July 7th – 2 days prior to a debate he had over a month to accept the invitation to), in which you will find the following text:

Thank you for the invitation to the Founders Values sponsored candidate event. Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, I am unable to attend.

The email was received at 3:59PM. This was, I’m quite sure, a calculated move to “respond” but certainly one designed to allow the organizers no other options. It’s dated July 7th and was apparently mailed July 8th with the debate being scheduled for July 9th. Seems to me Castle is running scared and can’t even “man up” enough to face his competition…degrading himself to back alley bob and weave tactics hoping to “appear” to care, while not having to actually face his record and his constituents while on the same stage with his competition. The strategy appears to be pervasive amongst endangered Democrats…makes perfect sense to me that Castle would steal a page from his cohorts’ playbook here.

The letter sent to Castle back on June 5th, inviting him to defend his record and encourage viewers to vote for him because of it:

Dear Congressman Castle:

Founders Values is a group dedicated to educating our children and the electorate about the Constitution and the founding principles of our republic. While much of our focus is on actually teaching these principles to the public and specifically children, we also must inform the electorate generally to the current state of government. We believe that the people of the State of Delaware have a right to know and understand where candidates for elected office stand in relation to one another. We also believe that the candidates themselves have an obligation to debate their positions publicly so that the people may decide for whom they should vote. Founders values has decided as a group that hosting a debate between candidates for elected office is an excellent way for us to facilitate this kind of public information sharing.

We would like to invite you to participate in a public debate with your opponents Christine O’Donnell, Chris Coons and Jim Rash on July 9th, 2010 at the Cokesbury Village retirement community in Hockessin. The time would be 7:30PM and the debate would last about 2 hours. We will also be asking local and national media to attend the event and to broadcast it live. It is also our intention to video tape the event and to make that video available on the internet. We have tried to position the event during a legislative break so that all candidates will have the ability to participate. If there is a time and date that works better with your schedule we would be happy to work with you on that.

Founders Values is proposing that the style of the debate be a panel style moderated event with the audience given cards to write their questions on. The first round of the debate would focus on questions that are developed and chosen ahead of time by the moderator and the hosts. These questions will relate directly to issues being debated in the United States Senate at the time of the debate. The second round of the debate would be dedicated to rapid fire questions from the audience followed by closing arguments. We would like to work with all campaigns to ensure a debate format that each of you can be comfortable in and are therefore open to modifying the format.

We look forward to having you at the debate and sharing your positions with the people of Delaware.

Sincerely,

I’m not running for Senate, but if I were…this would be a perfect opportunity for me to get my message out there, hear from my potential constituents, and look them in the eye and tell them where I stand on the issues they care about most. Christine O’Donnell was prepared to do that…and so was Jim Rash. THEY have a positive message about their plans to clean up the mess Politicians like Castle have been making in Washington DC. Castle has every reason to hide from this confrontation because he’s a part of the problem. No WONDER he didn’t show, and waited until the last minute to inform the organizers of his plan…he’s got a long record of things to run away from.

That he wasn’t man enough to admit it a month ago comes as no surprise…however selfish and small-minded this proves him to be.

[image via Art of Manliness]

***this post appears courtesy of  Dave “haystack” Poff, the author, with full permission.