The latest Tea Party candidate to win despite the conventional wisdom is Christine O’Donnell, yet another toothsome Mama Grizzly revered for her charisma far more than her brains.
But the Dems should be cautious about counting their votes in the next House and Senate before they are hatched. For once I agree with MSNBC’s overwrought Chris Matthews, who has been around as long as I have. We both remember Goldwater, and how the Dems were sure he had killed the conservative movement by being so extreme. (Looking back, he would be a centrist with a few liberal views today.) We also laughed off Ronald Reagan as too conservative and too flawed to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. (An actor? Give me a break.) Now his positions seem downright enlightened compared to the right-wing-nuts who keep pulling their party - and this country — farther and farther right.
Which leads us to today, where we see Rand Paul in Kentucky, Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharron Angle in Nevada and now Christine O’Donnell in Delaware winning top slots on Republican tickets. Among them, they support positions such as privatizing/eliminating Social Security, outlawing abortion even in the case of rape or incest, repealing the 14th Amendment and exercising of our Second Amendment right to armed revolution if the electorate fails to give them their God-given right to tell the rest of us what to do.
And you can add to that fear-inducing list some sort of government effort to persuade kids not to masturbate. Abstinence education is a big issue for Ms. O’Donnell, who looks like Katie Couric after a lobotomy in the video below.
My friend Dr. Carl S. Taylor at Michigan State argues that there is a grave danger in a culture that normalizes ignorance and violence. And the bar is moving fast in terms of pretending these views deserve serious consideration. Pretending also that Sarah Palin and her Tea Party cronies exhibit the minimum standards for running for high offices means we are colluding in reaping what we sow, if not this election, then the next.
Feeding into this insanity is a press corps so hamstrung by its supposed commitment to objectivity that we already hear reporters treating Ms. O’Donnell as a candidate deserving serious consideration. This is a woman who lied about her college degrees, whose home is in foreclosure and who seems to do nothing but run for offices she doesn’t win as a way to avoid working for a living.
Yet once we won the primary, even supposedly liberal MSNBC featured perky reporter Kelly O’Donnell (no relation) glossing over her namesake’s horrendous resume. All it takes to become respectable is for a group of equally unhinged and uneducated followers to delude themselves into thinking they are voting on principle when they are voting for charlatans trained to parrot all the “right” slogans.
Perhaps most unsettling for me is that I would like to see women succeed in politics. But I long for the day when I will never hear the words Mama Grizzly again. Sinclair Lewis once wrote that “when facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” I worry that you can add to that “and wearing a dress.”
I think that the only good thing that can be said of these ultra-rightwing nuts is…They may split the Republicans and, help the Democrats in November.
http://www.citizensforethics.org/crookedcandidates2010
whether she’s “crazy” or not is not as important to me as her criminal activities re: campaign funds. great bi-partisan watchdog list above just added her as one of America’s most crooked candidates. She’s been called a “complete fraud” by her former campaign manager.
Were there no Democrats running in that primary? Have we all lost track of the numbers? In all the primaries across the country, which I have noted, one common element. The Democratic voters have more participation in the elections. In fact they average 1.75:1, in some states the vote is closer to 2:1 and the independent/progressive voters have generally been excluded from voting on either ballot.
Yet here we are pressing the panic button instead of playing the power trump card. Democratic Party people need to recognize that diversity is a good thing. They keep saying it is then they pack-up like water buffaloes to protect the herd. (Just as the Republicans did the congress these past two years).
Scott Brown won in MA because the independent vote did not like the Democratic offering. Neither party has enough base to carry any race unless it is the local dog catcher. If Rand Paul had been in a race to the finish, he would be finished. Democrats must come together in this mid-term, focus on keeping the change motivated and Mr Obama must show real leadership. No more West Wing style White House. You do something good for people you tell them don’t make them guess and if the word does not get out keep telling them until they get it.