The Whole Nation Ponders: Whither Christine O'Donnell Next?

Elizabeth Montgomery she'll never be, but crackpot anti-masturbation teabagger Christine O'Donnell, who has been threatening to run for public office again, also says she's open to a TV show. Many had expected her to go right from her landslide defeat in Delaware on November 2 to a Fox News position. O'Donnell, an unemployed gadfly with a demonstrably false resume, claims to have been getting offers to write a book and be part of a TV reality show.

She was "not necessarily interested" in the reality show offer unless it was a "watchdog-type show," she said, noting she ran a 30-minute TV ad during the campaign. "I would like to do something like that."

If they do decide on a remake of Bewitched, Palin could certainly take on the Agnes Moorehead role, but, wonderers and wondering, who would play Darrin? Jim DeMint? Actually, almost anyone from Right Wing Watch's Ten Scariest Republicans Heading For Congress could play across from O'Donnell. Looking down the list so far, it's clear that Allen West is most likely to be a one-termer so maybe he's meant for the part. Joe Miller will probably be looking for gainful emplyment soon as Lisa Murkowski racks up more and more votes in the Alaska election canvas.

O'Donnell's definitely too old if they decide to remake Sabrina but she could certainly fight it out with Virginia Foxx for the lead role in The Bell Witch when they finally make that into a movie. For now though, she can continue to be an empty celebrity, kind of a political Paris Hilton while Republicans fight amonst each other over whether she cost the GOP control of the Senate and if she's destroying the party's reputation.

[I]mmediately following the results of Delaware’s Republican primary, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina remarked, “If you think what happened in Delaware is a ‘win’ for the Republican Party then we don’t have a snowball’s chance to win the White House. If you think Delaware was a wake-up call for Republicans then we have a shot at doing well for a long time.”

O’Donnell has been a point of contention for the GOP establishment since her victory on September 14. After her defeat of Mike Castle, a politician who served the state of Delaware for two decades in multiple capacities, both the media and the establishment targeted her as a weak and ultimately extreme candidate for the senatorial race. The Tea Partiers, however, asserted that O’Donnell represented the core values of the Tea Party movement, pointing to Mike Castle’s multiple failures to adhere to conservative principles.

Tea Party Express chairman Amy Kremer defended the Tea Party’s nomination of O’Donnell following the GOP primary:

If Mike Castle is not the most liberal Republican in Congress right now, he is one of them. He voted for TARP and cap-and-trade, ‘cash for clunkers,’ I could go on and on. If we send him back to Washington, he’ll vote with Obama-Reid-Pelosi the majority of the time. At some point you have to stand on principle and stop playing these party politics.

On Meet the Press, Senator DeMint, an active supporter of Tea Party candidates in the 2010 elections, said he believes that the Tea Party did not cost the GOP the Senate as stated by Meet the Press host David Gregory, and in fact, “is responsible for every Republican win this election.”

“I supported all the Republican candidates including Christine O’Donnell," declared DeMint. "Unfortunately, she was so maligned by Republicans, I don’t think she had a chance. But we had historic gains in the Senate.”

Gregory responded, “Senator, you’re not really saying it was really lack of Republican support that tanked her candidacy, are you? This is a woman who said in a national ad that she was not a witch.”

To this, DeMint replied, “I think we did see in the wake of her primary win that a number of Republicans suggested she was not a viable candidate. That did make it difficult for her to start on the right foot.”

Virginia Foxx and The "W" Word... Plus Darrell Issa... And Nigeria

Help send her back to North Carolina permanently by clicking on her nose

Look at that picture. Think about the outrageous, harmful behavior and extreme positions. I think I've been extraordinarily disciplined in not using the "w" word to describe her. I admit, it always comes to mind. But there is really a sordid and disgraceful history when it comes to accusing women of being the "w" word. The case can be made against Virginia Foxx without resorting to it. And I think Blue America and our allies at the Americans For America PAC did just that with our newest TV ad. We want to get it up on cable channels from Forsyth County to Watauga County and we need your help to do that. Even a $5 or $10 contribution will help make sure we don't have to leave out Mt. Airy or Clemmons, Kernersville, Statesville or even Ashe County. You can contribute by poking her picture in the eye above-- or, less gruesomely, by clicking on this Blue America link. Look at the ad and decide for yourself. Billy Kennedy would make as good a Member of Congress as Virginia Foxx has been an atrocious one. She was voted by our readers the worst of the worst. If you think the ad will help end her miserable career, dig deep and help us get it on TV. Unlike other PACs every cent goes up on the air. We're all volunteers and no one takes any salaries, percentages, commissions and we hire no consultants and take no money for "expenses." Donate $10 and that's an ad in Stokes or Iredell County on CNN or MSNBC.



Now back to the "w" word. It was in my mind not because of Foxx's unfortunate demeanor but because of a column Paul Krugman write for the NY Times a few days ago, It's Witch-Hunt Season. Krugman wasn't talking about Virginia Foxx though. He was, without ever mentioning his name, talking about Darrell Issa, who, unfortunately, hasn't drawn a credible Democratic challenger the way Foxx has.

The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment-- at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.

Now it’s happening again-- except that this time it’s even worse. Let’s turn the floor over to Rush Limbaugh: “Imam Hussein Obama,” he recently declared, is “probably the best anti-American president we’ve ever had.”

To get a sense of how much it matters when people like Mr. Limbaugh talk like this, bear in mind that he’s an utterly mainstream figure within the Republican Party; bear in mind, too, that unless something changes the political dynamics, Republicans will soon control at least one house of Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly.

So where is this rage coming from? Why is it flourishing? What will it do to America?

Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals-- even very moderate liberals-- legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage.

By the way, I’m not talking about the rage of the excluded and the dispossessed: Tea Partiers are relatively affluent, and nobody is angrier these days than the very, very rich. Wall Street has turned on Mr. Obama with a vengeance: last month Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant, compared proposals to end tax loopholes for hedge fund managers with the Nazi invasion of Poland.

And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage. Jane Mayer’s new article in the New Yorker about the superrich Koch brothers and their war against Mr. Obama has generated much-justified attention, but as Ms. Mayer herself points out, only the scale of their effort is new: billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife waged a similar war against Bill Clinton... And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found.

Darrell Issa has been bragging about turning Congress into a full-time witch hunt if the GOP takes back the House and he replaces Henry Waxman as the Chair of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Issa? The crook whose background includes serial car theft and weapons charges? Yeah, the guy with the yellowish teeth in the photo on the right. Witch hunts are bad, one of the most vile traits of organized human behavior-- and the concept transcends backwards Republican congressmen from northern San Diego County. In fact, the mentality in Issa-land isn't unlike the mindset in Akwa Ibom.