Personally, I’m of two minds on O’Donnell. One, I don’t think she’ll be elected and I think her chances of doing so diminish by the day. And two, I don’t think she’d do much harm even if elected. I view her pretty much as a likely do-nothing once in office, to ill-informed and too amatuerish to actually accomplish much in the way of law-making and functioning mostly as a roadblock to the Democrats, which is mostly what congressional Republicans have been doing of late anyway. And I think that she might even become a thorn in the side when it comes to some Republican measures, holding the line on spending even when more mainstream Republicans think it’s called for.
So essentially I think she’d try to be a right-wing cheerleader (ala Palin), a do-nothing legislator and possibly an obstinate knee-jerk roadblock to government spending and judicial appointments.
But more than anything I think that she’ll be defeated, but, with some time spent boning up on how congress actually works, what the Constitution actually says, and gaining some insight and polish, she could become a viable candidate at some point in the future. She’s not stupid, she’s just not ready for the job in much the same way that Caroline Kennedy wasn’t ready for it. She lacks polish and specificity and she needs to learn to think more quickly on her feet. And all that will come with time should she decide she wants to run again at some point in the future.
It’s even worse than that… She used that as her justification for wanting to reverse court decisions and allow public schools to teach creationism in science class. (and disputes that evolution is a fact, since it is just a theory.)
Remember Lynn Westmoreland? The Republican Congressman who wanted to post the 10 Commandments in front of public buildings, but could only remember three of them when asked what they were?
I think what she and other people who say that mean is that evolution doesn’t explain the beginning or creation of life. Time and again I’ve heard people say things like “Evolution doesn’t explain the creation of life, yet. But we’re getting there”. So as an explanation for creation it is regarded as a theory by many people, including some of its proponents.
This will probably send you through the roof, but…so what?
It’s obvious that the guy was basically cheesed off that the left has been working to for the last few decades to remove Christian imagery and text from government property, where once it existed without complaint. He wants this practice stopped and he decided on the Ten Commandments as a way to fight back. That doesn’t mean he knows them word for word (or that he necessarily lives by them either :D), nor that he should, nor that it matters.
This is her third run for the Senate. You know that, right? This is what she’s like after having lost and coming back to do better. She’s already had four years to start “boning up”.
How long is it supposed to take her to read the Constitution?
Yeah, but this is the first time she’s been “Palinized”. You can tell that by how open and naive she is. If she stays in politics I expect she’ll be much more savvy (and more well-informed) on the next go round.
How many other candidates have found it a job requirement to read the Constitution? Hell, I’d wager most of the people in Congress now couldn’t tell you most of what’s in it themselves.
Look, the thing that Tea Partiers are looking for now is people who will be determined to fight government spending and seek to reduce the size of government. They aren’t looking for Constitutional scholars and they aren’t looking for people who know how to schmooze other politicians in smoke-filled back rooms. From the Tea Party perspective O’Donnell offers what they’re looking for. I would imagine though that had she been vetted much at all before they threw their support behind her, they would have sought another candidate.
Well, there ya go. The Tea Party doesn’t want to bridge the partisan divide. It wants right-wingers in office who will not budge, the thinking being that we’ve gone way too far left as it is and that to compromise would only take us even further to the left than we are now.
Except that if someone is claiming that other politicians are not holding to Constitutional principles, you’d expect that claimant to have a strong idea of what they’re talking about.
I’m not sure that this will differentiate the Tea Party from the “not just no, but HELL NO!” Republicans that are currently in office. Ya, they’ve certainly been all about compromise. :rolleyes:
I know this is anecdotal but I just don’t buy this.
You may not know that I’m on the ballot this year for the post of County Commissioner. Running as a Democrat I nevertheless have many friends and associates locally who are Republicans. I’m seen as a good crossover candidate with appeal both ways. Yay for me.
But we have one of the most active ‘9-12 Party’ groups in the state. They march, they fundraise, and their leader (a dear friend of mine) is in near constant demand as a speaker around the state for other groups. He runs a good business in the downtown and seems to enjoy his role. Even with that he’s told me that he and his wife plan to vote for me. Again, yay for me.
So I ran into him at the grocery store a month or so ago. Asked him how things were going and he told me of his travels and speaking engagements and such. Then he sung out with that fact that he loved the receptions he was getting ‘because we have to take our government back from the blacks’.
and if someone is claiming to use the constitution as a reference for votes in the senate; and if that someone is claiming that they “studied constitutional government” at claremont graduate university; they should have some knowledge of the document.
i’m not sure ms o’donnell could sing the preamble song at this point.
Yeah, ‘Oy’ indeed. Had you never heard this kind of talk from him before? And how did you interpret what he was saying? Not that one is more justified than the other, but do you know whether he was talking about welfare and other social programs, or Obama and other blacks in office, or just black people in general?
And good luck come this election. You sound like a good guy with a good reputation. Any idea why there so few of you on a national level?
I’m not sure if that one is true. I was looking up her background to support my points in this thread, and I think the “studying constitutional government” thing was traced back to a LinkedIn profile that she has denied writing. I think it’s fair to ask for a stronger cite that she’s made that claim.
I believe I simply smiled and nodded and headed for the soda pop aisle.
I had not previously heard such things out of Glenn. But he’s gotten more radicalized as he’s gotten deeper into the Tea Party thing. It was my impression that he was arguing against the President and others in government he perceived as being ‘black’ or ‘for blacks’ and such.
Still, it strikes me through my experience that the Tea Party, at least the local ones that I know, put on a good show of other things but tend to skew white, less educated, and angry. The anger is vague and necessarily not focused but aimed at government in general. They know they’re upset but have trouble actually defining an ‘offense in particular’ that they can point to. It’s like those people who claim their constitutional rights are being violated but when pressed couldn’t tell you which ones.
Having a passing knowledge of the constitution does not require being a constitutional scholar. She, as with most things in this campaign, is completely ignorant. If she were not running for senator. it would be laughable. But senator is not a local unimportant office. This is the big time. This position matters. She brings nothing to the campaign. She would be a total joke but the fear is enough delusional people like you may exist and she could actually get elected. Then we are all screwed.
robot arm, she stated it during the first debate. the following is a quote from the la times transcript of the debate.
O’DONNELL: I am. I paid for my own college education. I also have a graduate fellowship in constitutional government from the Claremont Institute. I know how hard it is to earn and keep a dollar. And one of the reasons why the Delawareans should be able to trust me is because when I did in this economy, I worked for nonprofit groups. Nonprofit groups were the first to have been hurt. When I fell upon difficult times, I made the sacrifices needed to set things right. I sold my house. And I sold a lot of my possessions in order to pay of my personal debt and to become in a stronger position.
