Ultraconservative Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell won the Republican nomination for the US Senate in Delaware by promoting extreme conservative and small government views, but since grabbing a spot on the ballot things she said years ago have begun to haunt her, and with her the Republican party.
Most recently come to light: A statement she made in a 2006 debate claiming that China was plotting to take over the US. She said that was based on classified information about China that she could not divulge.
The Republican-aligned Tea Party movement has proved a double-edged sword. It has created a wealth of excitement among Republicans, particularly the extreme right wing of the party. At the same time, Tea Party -candidates like O’Donnell have denied places on the ballot to mainstream Republicans who might have been more able to win the general election.
With US unemployment stuck at an unacceptably high rate of nearly 10 percent and millions of Americans’ dreams turned to nightmares in a wave of home mortgage foreclosures, Republicans have been widely forecast to win back control of the US House of Representatives, perhaps even the Senate, on a wave of voter anger over the still-dismal economic outlook.
Even though the worst economic downturn since the 1930s Great Depression began under former Republican US president George W. Bush, voters are blaming US President Barack Obama and his Democratic majorities in the US Congress for failing to fix things fast enough. Democrats have been widely seen as in deep trouble come election day on Nov. 2.
Still, the realities of the US political system may diminish a Republican landslide. Candidates for office are granted a place on a party’s ballot, in most states, by winning a primary election in their states. Historically, the party base, particularly party hard-liners and extremists, have undue influence in the primaries.
That system often means the candidate of either the Republican or Democratic party ends up representing the extremes of that party’s beliefs, making them unelectable in the general election when more moderate voters go to the polls.
In the case of O’Donnell, she defeated Representative Mike Castle, a popular and highly electable Republican former two-term governor of Delaware, who had been widely expected to take the Senate seat vacated by US Vice President Joe Biden. That would have been a huge embarrassment for Democrats in an already bad year.
Now, polls show O’Donnell is badly trailing Democrat Chris Coons.
O’Donnell issued her comments about China as she and two other Republican candidates debated US policy during Delaware’s 2006 Senate primary, which O’Donnell ultimately lost. That was her second unsuccessful bid for the office.
“There’s much I want to say. I wish I wasn’t privy to some of the classified information that I am privy to,” she said.
“A country that forces women to have abortions and mandates that you can only have one child and will not allow you the freedom to read the Bible, you think they can be our friend?” she asked.
In the debate, one opponent challenged O’Donnell’s claim about having secret information. O’Donnell did not answer specifically, but suggested she had received it through nonprofit groups she worked with that frequently sent missionaries there.
O’Donnell’s campaign did not immediately respond on Monday to questions about the comments.
In television appearances in the 1990s, O’Donnell had said she had “dabbled into witchcraft” in high school.
She has since made light of the comment. On her first TV ad since winning the primary, which started airing yesterday, O’Donnell smiles at the camera and tries to assure Delaware voters: “I’m not a witch. I’m nothing you’ve heard. I’m you.”
On another old television appearance, she declared “evolution is myth.”
On a clip from July 1999, she said with a laugh that she tried several religions, but skipped becoming a Hare Krishna because she did not want to be a vegetarian.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion