Tea Party candidates have racked up a number of impressive ballot-box upsets, so it’s little surprise that seemingly everybody running on the Right claims the Tea Party mantle.
But just because a candidate self-identifies with the Tea Party it does not mean they have the GOP Housecleaning Seal of Approval.
Exhibit A is Christine O’Donnell, who is running for Senate in Delaware’s GOP primary against Rep. Mike Castle. At first blush, this seems like a good thing. Castle might be the most liberal Republican in the House, and it seems appropriate that someone should challenge him from the Right.
But does it have to be a candidate who makes all conservatives look like wingnuts?
Former O’Donnell campaign aides recently released a video on the Internet asking, “Isn’t Mike Castle cheating on his wife with a man?” When asked about it on radio last week, O’Donnell unnecessarily repeated the unsubstantiated rumor twice in the process of distancing herself from it.
Also last week, O’Donnell told The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack that she fears for her safety during this campaign. “They’re following me,” she said. “They follow me home at night. I make sure that I come back to the townhouse and then we have our team come out and check all the bushes and check all the cars to make sure that—they follow me.”
O’Donnell then claimed someone vandalized her home during her 2008 run against Joe Biden. And who was that? “I’m not sure who did it, but I know for a fact that Mike Castle and [Delaware GOP chairman] Tom Ross were campaigning against me,” she said. “They’ve been sabotaging my candidacy since 2008.”
O’Donnell’s campaign manager, Matt Moran, also told McCormack that pollster Scott Rasmussen is deliberately tainting his surveys to make O’Donnell look bad. I looked at the questions asked in those surveys and I have no idea what he was talking about.
Despite this erratic behavior, some conservatives are still supporting O’Donnell such as Talk radio heavyweight Mark Levin, who deserves immense credit for helping to galvanize the Tea Party movement.
But McCormack’s experience squares perfectly with O’Donnell’s brief visit last week with Examiner editorial staffers last week. She produced an old poll in which she led the Democrat in the general election, even though we pointed out a more recent one in which she trails by double digits. She repeated her paranoia about Tom Ross and Scott Rasmussen.
Asked whether her campaign was spreading online rumors that Castle would switch parties after the election, she answered: “There’s enough people in Delaware who believe because of deals that have been cut before and looking at the writing on the wall that Castle might switch parties…It’s something that people have come to us with, but we certainly didn’t originate it.”
Moran then added that Castle switching parties was within “the realm of reason” and suggested that Castle was dodging inquiries about the rumor.
I think it’s certainly in the “realm of reason” that O’Donnell is running a campaign full of delusions, ignorance and paranoia.
To hear liberals tell it, the Tea Party is a rowdy group of haters that will support any conservative candidate with a pulse. That’s completely false. The Tea Party’s greatest success so far was the election of Scott Brown, the moderate Massachusetts Republican who took over Ted Kennedy’s senate seat. Brown’s Tea Party support was indicative of a “a lively and organic political movement that is thinking strategically about getting people elected,” as I wrote at the time.
Tea Partiers do prefer conservatives – but sane ones. And someday, a candidate will arise in the First State who is both conservative and electable. This just isn’t the year.
Mark Hemingway is an Examiner columnist.
