Take a moment from your busy holiday season to consider the following fact: As the new class of Tea Party backed legislators prepares to head off to Washington for the 112th Congress, the movement is once again besmirched by one of it’s former stars. This time it’s thanks to a slip up by that one time sensation, Christine O’Donnell, who is now under the microscope for yet another round of financial improprieties, these related to her failed 2008 run for the U.S. Senate.
According to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, it seems pretty clear that O’Donnell had been using her campaign money to finance her personal lifestyle and that would be highly illegal. These allegations were backed up as well by Ben Evans of the Associated Press, who pointed out:” At least two former campaign workers have alleged that she routinely used political contributions to pay personal expenses including her rent as she ran for the Senate…O’Donnell has acknowledged paying part of her rent with campaign money, arguing that her house doubled as a campaign headquarters.” Likewise, Mark Halperin and others have provided similar and supporting observations. To date, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware is reviewing a complaint filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, examining the merits of that complaint and whether or not the amount of money purloined from the campaign reaches the appropriate threshold to require D.O.J. action. The matter is also before the FBI.
Ms. O’Donnell has tried to deflect this latest controversy by asserting that she is he victim of “thug tactics” perpetrated by Vice President Biden or some well orchestrated conspiracy being carried out by the “professional left.” However, Melanie Sloan, President of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington quickly dispatched with these allegations with the following comment which revealed that the source of the allegations against O’Donnell came from her own Republican Staffers and not:” “because we’re some Soros funded group or something, it’s the Republican staffers — people who worked for her — who made it clear she was stealing the money,”
While many would ask the question: “Why bother with Christine O’Donnell as she has by now been roundly dismissed for the buffoon that she is?” Well that may in fact be the case as far as Ms. O’Donnell goes but there is a larger, more compelling question beyond the particulars of her personal missteps alone. That larger question revolves around the selection of someone like Christine O’Donnell as a candidate for public office and what that says about decision making process within the Tea Party Movement as it relates to who is picked to run and how they are vetted. Moreover, what in turn does the selection of candidates of Ms. O’Donnell’s caliber that say about the Tea Party Movement’s chances for long term success? I for one think that this element of the movement’s modus operandi is in fact one of it’s greatest weaknesses, one that works against its long term viability as a serious force within American politics. Not to telegraph too much, but this will be part and parcel of a wider discussion in the New Year, Stay tuned and Happy New Year.
Steven J. Gulitti
12/30/10
New York say about the democrat party??? Certainly not the
same evil that you attribute to the Tea Partiers. Please cut the double standard bullshit. There are losers in all parties and religions—and on all blogs, Mr.Gulitti.
Your comment was much, much too brief. You could have made the same comment in many more words. Our diarist could write:
A lot of words, published on a dozen blogs, that say almost nothing.
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p>So let me help you rewrite your comment in Guliteese:
While many would ask the question: “Why re-raise the issue of John Edwards ill-fated, but widely supported primary campaign?
Given the recent sad demise of his wife, is that not an uninteresting question that, with our ever contracting leisure time, we should not take up?” Indeed, some would lend their agreement, even reluctantly, with that sentiment as rhetorically expressed. But, as my readers surely know, Edwards’ campaign poses larger, more profound, and interesting questions about liberal Democrats and their tendency to join bandwagons without looking back. Was it not obvious to objective observers and my readers that Edwards was himself a profoundly flawed candidate? How do we explain his continuing the campaign despite the skeleton in the closet of his marital infidelity? Liberals persisted in overlooking this and embraced him despite his voting record which should have given them pause but it did not thereby raising the larger question of whether liberals in fact are ill-attuned to detecting charlatanism when it appears larger than life. Thus, we have the unsuitable but in no way undelicious irony of them making fun of O’Donnell’s embrace by the adherents of the Tea Party movement’s multiple organizations. One might think it would give them pause, but nothing of the sort can stop the endless flow of somewhat meaningless words on this score.
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p>We shall all learn to write this way following Mr Gulitti’s excellent tutelage.
You certianly are a bit of a blowhard.
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p>I’ll continue to post here just for the laugh I get watching you get all worked up.
You can be more pompous than that! Jeez, you hardly tried.
You want to talk about pomposity? Why don’t you reiterate about how much you like Proust?
You Dec. 7:
A normal person would have written: “Incoming Republican Representatives claim they’ll change Washington,” and left out the recalling, the comprising, and the not being mistaken.
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p>Or this from December 8: