Well now that the last of the “Tea Party” primaries is over, one can only wonder what people on the right were thinking when they voted for Christine O’Donnell in Delaware. Didn’t William F. Buckley, the scion of the post World War II conservative movement lecture the faithful on the need to nominate the most electable conservatives? As a matter of fact I know he said that because Charles Krauthammer reiterated Mr. Buckley’s dictum just last week in a Washington Post article. Even Karl Rove, a man desperately seeking political redemption, was nothing less than flabbergasted in O’Donnell’s election. He went so far as to deride the prospect of her being on the ballot as nothing short of a disaster. Is Rove suggesting that O’Donnell now constitutes, singlehandedly, the most formidable obstacle to the G.O.P’s turning over the Senate in November? Rove characterized O’Donnell as unelectable, untruthful and outright “nutty” in his own words.
So let me get this straight, the Tea Party that has been vociferous in advocating for the virtues of the free market, fiscal discipline and personal responsibility, wants us to vote for someone who according a N.Y. Times article: “has struggled for years with personal finance problems – she has reported earnings of only $5,800 between most of this year and last and she has defaulted on her mortgage – and fudged her educational background and past campaign achievement, much of which was dredged up and disseminated by her own party… Yet, she told a reporter for The News Journal of Wilmington last March that her campaign had paid half the rent on her town house there because it doubled as her headquarters, one of several financial oddities enumerated in an article in that paper. Also included was an Internal Revenue Service lien for $11,744 in back taxes and penalties from 2005 which Ms. O’Donnell attributed to an error made by the federal agency and a 2008 mortgage default judgment on her home…Further, while Ms. O’Donnell claimed for several years that she was a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University, in fact she attained her bachelor’s degree in English literature only this summer. She said that while she participated in the cap-and-gown ceremony nearly two decades ago, she was unable to formally graduate because of unpaid tuition.” If I’m not mistaken there’s a name for people who graduate after many years of scholarly study at an institution of higher learning, I think they go by the titles: Doctor, Lawyer or PhD.
If these revelations are not enough to send you onto the floor in laughter, then how about the fact that O’Donnell, who tout’s herself as a religious person, has actually flirted with the opposite end of the religious spectrum, Witchcraft! But don’t take my word for it, there will be no spin here, listen to O’Donnell in her own words: “I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar and I didn’t know it. I mean, there was a little blood there and stuff like that… We went to a movie and then had a little picnic on a satanic altar.” And all of this just a mere eleven years ago, in what one could reasonably consider a person’s politically formative years.
Sarah Palin has more than established her bona fides as a farcical figure with her regular political pratfalls, a lack of knowledge of the issues, bizarre claims about socialism and Marxism, and her outright anti-intellectual demeanor. But with the victory of Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware Primary the Tea party has crossed a new and exciting threshold, going from the farcical to the absolutely absurd. I can’t but help to believe that they must have been partying into the wee hours, upon news of O’Donnell’s election, in the White House and anywhere in Washington D.C. and beyond as the Democrats may have just dodged the bullet as it relates to losing the Senate. Hey, you can’t make this stuff up.
Steve Gulitti
9/21/10
