Mainstream GOP at odds with TP
“Witchcraft” has entered the American political scene, and in a big way. Well, that’s after the latest Tea Party superstar, Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell, admitted she “dabbled into witchcraft” when she was a high school student. Who am I to find fault with a school kid with an unusual extracurricular activity? It’s not Christine O’Donnell the associate witch that scares me as much as Christine O’Donnell the Republican senatorial candidate.
She’s a walking political time bomb. Karl Rove, who’s been known to support a few right wingers in his day, was beside himself when he discovered O’Donnell would be the Republican’s best hope to control the Senate after the mid-term elections. “There’s just a lot of nutty things she’s been saying that don’t seem to add up,” Rove said. Having served under George W. Bush, nobody knows nutty like Rove knows nutty.
So when the video from O’Donnell’s 2007 appearance on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” surfaced with her saying another one of those “nutty things,” you could hear the collective groan from non-Tea Party Republicans everywhere.
“American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains,” she told O’Reilly.
I don’t know why she’s complaining. If there are mice walking around with “fully functioning human brains,” I’m pretty sure they’d vote straight Tea Party.
Recently, O’Reilly balked at pulling out all of O’Donnell’s appearances on his show. He claims he’s trying to be fair to her. But he does add, “She’s been on this program a couple of times, and we have some kind of crazy stuff that she said.”
Let’s face it, if Bill O’Reilly says you say crazy stuff, and he works at a place where crazy stuff disguised as serious news is said all the time, then maybe she just might be saying even crazier stuff.
This is part of a mini-Republican Civil War between the Tea Party and establishment Republicans.
While the Tea Party, thanks to their high priestess Sarah Palin, has enjoyed success getting their candidates nominated in favor of establishment Republicans, under national scrutiny most of those candidates have exhibited extreme takes on the issues.
Nevada’s Sharron Angle would have voted “no” for Katrina relief, and she wants to do away with the Department of Education and Social Security. Alaska’s Joe Miller claims unemployment insurance is unconstitutional. Kentucky’s Rand Paul launched his general election campaign with an exotic take on civil rights.
Now there’s O’Donnell, with her past campaigns against masturbation, her profound misunderstanding about stem cell research leading to mice with PhD’s, and her strange, if limited, exposure to witchcraft.
And there’s more.
She’s taking up the Tea Party mantle of “fiscal responsibility” with a past that’s drawn serious questions about her personal “fiscal responsibility.”
Not only have there been charges of unpaid debts and troubles with the Internal Revenue Service in her past, now there’s the serious allegation that she misapplied campaign donations from her previous runs for U.S. Senate.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a non-partisan watchdog organization that recently filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission that alleges O’Donnell spent campaign contributions on her personal living expenses. That could lead to criminal charges.
According to CREW, when O’Donnell needed to pay her rent in 2009, she dipped into her unspent campaign contributions to pay it twice.
Of course, there’s been the usual refrain that this is some kind of political (I feel a pun coming on) witch hunt. Except the person who tipped off CREW to the alleged mishandling of money is O’Donnell’s former campaign finance consultant, David Keegan.
There are claims that the “fiscally responsible” O’Donnell used campaign money to buy gas, meals and to go bowling after her campaign had ended. And in each case she listed her expenditures as “expense reimbursements.”
I guess if you need a little extra cash, all you have to do is run a losing political campaign, and spend what’s left of your donations living the high life.
Or maybe you can just become a witch.
Edward A. Owens of Uniontown is Webmaster of “Red Raider Nation: Where Champions Live.” E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.