The Year of The Dumb Republican Woman

Too many women in Republican politics, it seems, are turning out to be just as stupid as men are. Of course, what do you expect from the party that gave us lawmakers hoping to make abortion a capital crime? Nevadans Sharron Angle and Sue Lowden may have disappeared for the time being, but several GOP women threaten to loom large in what passes for political discourse in this new year.

First, Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann is getting a seat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Next! Incoming New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte is already hitting the ground running in her attempts to appear dumber and dimmer than Bachmann. Delivering the Republican response to President Obama's weekly address this New Year's Day, Ayotte declared that the American people sent a message that they want both the size of government and the deficit reduced by voting for GOP candidates in November. Never mind polls indicating that most people don't consider the deficit a top priority and that they support more government spending to create more jobs while opposing cuts in Social Security to bring down the deficit. By talking up the need for jobs today, Obama seemed more in tune with average Americans than Ayotte did. How dumb is that, a Republican giving a Democratic President the advantage in the debate? The election was not an endorsement of Republican ideas, as one new senator insists, but rather discontent with the status quo. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the only freshman Democrat elected to a full Senate term last year? No, Marco Rubio of Florida.

Sarah Palin, of course, continues to dominate among dumb women in the Republican party, with her folksy (read uneducated) demeanor and her insistence on opposing everything coming out of the Obama White House - including First Lady Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. One might think Sarah Palin is actually pretty smart in her attempts at solidarity with the dumb male GOP primary voter by shooting a defenseless caribou and encouraging consumption of fatty foods. After all, those are the biggest pastimes of her intended audience. But with only 49 percent of Republicans endorsing her possible presidential bid compared to 67 percent of them expressing enthusiasm for a run by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee - who, being someone who's dealt with obesity himself, has sharply criticized Palin for her attack on Mrs. Obama - she appears to have peaked and her moment in the sun has passed. Only no one can convince her.

Chris Matthews, incidentally, thought it was ridiculous of Palin to compare herself to Ronald Reagan, a two-term governor of California, the nation's most populous state, who, Matthews said, revitalized the American economy and ended the Cold War as President. Uh, Chris? The collapse of OPEC revitalized the American economy. Pope John Paul II, Lech Wałęsa, and Lithuanian nationalists ended the Cold War. That damn actor in the White House had nothing to do with any of it.

Finally, to perpetual remedial student Christine O'Donnell, who has enjoyed fourteen minutes and thirty seconds of fame with the clock ticking. Under investigation for using campaign funds for personal expenses, O'Donnell countercharged that she is the victim of a leftist smear campaign directed by Vice President Biden and aimed at destroying her political career. Uh, I think she already did that herself. How many points did she lose by in her bid for Biden's U.S. Senate seat in Delaware? Seventeen?

Unlike with Bachmann or Palin (the jury's still out on Ayotte), I don't dislike Christine O'Donnell. I'm more inclined to pity her. And, if God protects fools and children, she sure has it covered both ways.

The Great Exasperator

I didn't see Christine O'Donnell's first U.S. Senate debate with her Democratic rival Chris Coons, but people say he seemed exasperated with her, and they probably feel sorry for him. I'm sure some pundits, though, say Coons lost the debate because of his exasperation, just like when Albert Gore condescendingly sighed during a presidential debate with George Walker Bush. But, as Bill Maher proved with a montage clip of O'Donnell's appearances on his 1990s show "Politically Incorrect," which he showed on his current program on HBO, she has exasperated a lot of people.

Among the panelists on various installments of "Politically Incorrect" were Ben Affleck, Dana Carvey, Al Franken (can you imagine him and O'Donnell in the Senate together?), author Clive Barker, Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller, screenwriter Larry Gelbart, television actress Edie McClurg, comedian Steven Wright, "Dallas" actor Patrick Duffy, British comedienne Patricia Routledge, and "Partridge Family" alumnus Danny Bonaduce.

Okay, Patricia Routledge was never on "Politically Incorrect" with Christine O'Donnell, and I'm sure she was never on that show at all. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. But every other person I mentioned did have to deal with O'Donnell. Imagine someone so thickheaded she exasperated Danny Bonaduce. She is that bad. Plus, like Claudia Zimmer from Alan Alda's movie The Four Seasons (played by Rita Moreno), she always kept playing up the fact that she's Italian, at least on her mother's side. Patrick Duffy - who, as his name suggests, was probably happy she didn't play up her Irish side - was so fed up with her saying she's Italian, he said to her, "So eat something and shut up!"

All of these "Politically Incorrect" episodes had their moments, with friends and guests that Bill Maher can recall. Some are dead and some are living. In their lives, Christine O'Donnell annoyed them all. :-D

I Am She As You Are She As You Are Me . . .

. . . and we're Christine O'Donnell.

I'm crying.

Delaware's most famous deadbeat has put out a series of incoherent television ads designed to re-introduce herself to Diamond State voters. It's a whole new twist on negative campaigning in that O'Donnell, facing the camera with soft music in the background, tells us who she isn't. She's not a witch. She's not an heiress. She's not a Yale graduate. (Yeah, we figured that out.) She's apparently . . . us.

This ad is goo-goo without the g'joob. O'Donnell is trying to cast herself as someone who knows the value of a dollar and is trying to to the best she can to get by. This argument would actually work if, I don't know, the dollars she spent on herself were her own and not from her previous Senate campaigns. And she still apparently has trouble paying her bills. That doesn't sound like the average American or the average Delawarean to me. If the voters of Delaware accept her as one of their own and send her to Senate, and if she becomes the newest spokeswoman for the American right, she really will prove to be us. We'll be proven to be just as dumb as she is.

How could such dumb ads work? Personally, I think O'Donnell has no interest of being elected to the Senate. I agree with those who suspect she's only trying to get a television deal with Fox News. She wants to follow in the footsteps of her father, Daniel O'Donnell, the official Bozo the Clown of the Philadelphia television market.

Oops! Correction: Daniel O'Donnell was not the official Bozo the Clown in Philly, but rather a stand-in. Christine sixteen, choking smoker, don't you think the joker laughs at you? :-D

Cleaning Up Some Messes

BP announced that the well in the Gulf of Mexico is killed. I'm very pleased to hear this, but you think maybe they could have killed he well before they killed the Gulf?

Thad Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who oversaw the government's efforts to contain the oil leak, was on the PBS NewsHour tonight, and he admitted that the Coast Guard and BP still have to continue working on cleaning the oil as much as possible. I only hope they keep up the not-so-good work. Many livelihoods have been lost already.

(Correction: Last night I wrote that Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell said she "dabbled in witchcraft" on Bill Maher's show in 1997. The clip is from 1999. October 29, 1999, in fact, two days before Halloween. Maybe that explains her admission. Well, if the [evil] spirit moves you. . . .)

It's Witchcraft

Bill Maher, commenting on Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, noted that the Republicans may still have a shot at winning Joe Biden's old Senate seat because O'Donnell, unlike Sarah Palin, comes across as a nice, sweet person. But he probably increased the chances of Chris Coons, O'Donnell's Democratic opponent, to win in November when, on his HBO show, he played a clip of O'Donnell from his old show "Politically Incorrect" - the clip was from around 1997 - saying that she "dabbled" in witchcraft.

So O'Donnell was actually involved in diabolical rituals and learned how to cast spells on people? Kind of what Palin is famous for!

I want to laugh, but I also want to cry - I mean, she could be in the United States Senate in four months! This is a woman, after all, who has theorized that of scientists creating mice with human brains. (I think the opposite theory - humans with mouse brains - is more plausible, especially in explaining why Democrats are always caving in to conservatives!) But the more I learn about her, the more I feel sorry for the poor girl. She comes across as a sweet naive young woman who doesn't know what she's talking about and doesn't even know what she's saying half the time. She's like a cross between Sally White - Mia Farrow's ditzy character in Woody Allen's Radio Days - and an MSNBC morning talk show host who obviously needs the guidance of a smarter, savvier sidekick. But I'm not here to discuss Joe Scarborough. ;-)

As for her witchcraft, I can imagine O'Donnell over a hot cauldron trying to put a curse on Mike Castle, and - possibly by twitching her nose - hexing Karl Rove for opining that she's a flawed candidate. And I'll bet she really looks cute in one of those pointed hats! Maybe, if elected, she'll continue to live in Delaware and commute to Washington by broom! But after sending to the Senate heavyweights like Joe Biden, William Roth, and Thomas Carper, is Delaware really serious about sending to the Senate a self-professed ex-witch with the perkiness of Samantha and the maturity of Sabrina?

O'Donnell has laughed off the witchcraft remark, and it will probably give her the free media she wants, but her wackiness is bound to illicit laughter and fear in many voters. Rove may have had his bark stripped for suggesting she's a weak candidate, but he's been proven right every day since the Delaware primary. I just want to know one thing - if O'Donnell gets into the Senate, will her economic agenda be referred to as "Wiccanomics?" :-D

Chris Coons is probably thrilled that Bill Maher showed this clip; I'll bet he could kiss him for this! I wouldn't recommend it. O'Donnell will only make insinuations against Coons and ask him where his "man pants" are.

Mike Castled

In a stunning upset in Delaware, Mike Castle lost his bid for the nomination to run for Vice President Biden's old Senate seat to Palinette Christine O'Donnell, a high-wired far-right Tea Partier with a history of running for office in that state and never getting anywhere. O'Donnell - who is not related to anyone at MSNBC - has proven that you don't have to be an experienced, professional politician who knows what you're doing - like Mike Castle, Delaware's lone congressman for nearly twenty years. You just have to make a lot of noise to attract attention from fellow nutjobs. (O'Donnell ran against Biden in 2008, but lost. She allegedly used some of her campaign funds for personal expenses, leading her campaign manager to back Castle in this special election.)

The Democrats suddenly have a chance to keep the Senate. O'Donnell - whose biggest claim to fame is as a sexual abstinence activist in the nineties - will face Democrat Chris Coons in November. Some people have suggested that Coons may have an uphill battle because of strong Tea Party support in rural Kent and Sussex counties that may not be offset enough by voters in urban New Castle County, which includes Wilmington. Except that only 31 percent of Delaware voters think O'Donnell is electable, and even Dick Armey wouldn't endorse her.

Meanwhile, Tea Party supporter Joe Miller, having defeated Lisa Murkowski in the Alaska U.S. Senate primary with the blessing and support of Sarah Palin - who has made her dislike for the Murkowski family clear - is talking about privatizing Social Security (I think I heard right!) - has given his Democratic opponent a fighting chance in this very Republican state. Don't count out Scott McAdams, that Democrat opposing Miller. Bear in mind that Mark Begich became the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Alaska since 1974 only two years ago. His Republican opponent, the late and venerable Ted Stevens, was only hindered by corruption charges. Miller may be an even bigger nutjob than Christine O'Donnell!