Michael Gaynor
Will Christine O'Donnell stand tall or small?
By Michael Gaynor
Either we will continue to be subject to President Obama's radical and only very partially revealed plans for our future, or we will place a strong check on the president's ambitions.
Tragically, Christine O'Donnell, Delaware's Republican Senate candidate who upset former two-term governor and nine-term Congressman Mike Castle for the Republican nomination, may give Karl Rove (who claimed that her victory decreased the chance that the Republicans will retake control of the United States Senate) the satisfaction of saying "I told you so" and make Bill O'Reilly the winner in his $5,000 bet with Laura Ingraham on the race for the benefit of charity.
Ingraham interviewed O'Donnell on her nationally syndicated radio show the morning after O'Donnell won the primary and then bet on O'Donnell to win.
A few days later O'Donnell suddenly canceled appearances on Sunday national television shows and then announced on Sean Hannity's television show that she would shun national media and conduct a local campaign.
Fortunately, Nevada's Republican Senate candidate, Sharron Angle, saw the wisdom of running a national campaign in challenging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. She raised $14,000,000 in the third quarter, primarily because contributors across America want Reid to lose.
Thanks (ironically) to Rove and (suitably) to Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh, O'Donnell raised more than $2,000,000 after winning the primary.
Unfortunately, O'Donnell did not highlight the fact that unlike all other Republican Senate hopefuls, she would join the upcoming lame duck session if she won, replacing an Obama Democrat, and thus be in position to thwart the radical agenda planned for that session.
That's a big deal. Now Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts raised $14,000,000 in a month (January 2010), because he was perceived as the 41st vote to block Obamacare.
Instead of focusing national attention on her unique opportunity to protect America in the lame duck session and depicting her radical opponent as a rubberstamp for Obama, the O'Donnell campaign has been preparing not effective commercials.
The first commercial featured the telegenic O'Donnell denying that she's a witch, confirming that nobody's perfect and insisting that she is whoever is watching the commercial.
The second commercial was worse: she said her opponent went to Yale and inherited millions of dollars, but she didn't.
The third commercial featured Coons as...the Tax Man. O'Donnell is not seen or heard in it. And, for reasons that anyone who remembers that the first President Bush was not re-elected after breaking his pledge against new taxes, the commercial does not mention that Coons broke promises not to raise taxes.
Allahpundit acknowledged that the O'Donnell campaign is still behind by 15 to 20 points, but hopefully put the best face on the latest commercial (http://hotair.com/archives/2010/10/12/new-christine-odonnell-ad-the-tax-man/):
"Can't go wrong attacking Democrats for snatching at voters' pocketbooks, even in a blue state. Fun stuff here, and noteworthy for how hard it strains to turn the focus of the election completely away from O'Donnell and towards Coons. Apart from the lightning-quick attribution at the end of the spot, her name is never mentioned; there's not even an 'I'm Christine O'Donnell and I approve this message' voiceover, which has become perfunctory in political ads ever since Bush started doing it in 2004. Coons wants the election to be a referendum on O'Donnell and O'Donnell wants the election to be a choice between her and Coons — a mirror image, ironically, of how the White House is treating the midterms nationally — and the only way to do that is to educate voters relentlessly about his record. If she's smart, she won't appear in another ad until election day. From now on, it's all Tax Man, all the time."
Alas, "all Tax Man, all the time" won't be enough for a candidate with no governmental service experience.
To have a chance to win, O'Donnell must expose Coons as an Obamaton radical, not a tax collector, and display herself as a feisty alternative who learned from her youthful indiscretions and promotes traditional American values that radicals reject.
Strangely, O'Donnell appears to be about to receive help from an unexpected source — President Obama.
Allahpundit:
"Obama's planning a trip to Delaware this Friday to campaign for [Coons].... The White House is in smear mode right now, so Obama's going to try to draw some extra attention to the tea-party 'witch' in hopes of discrediting TP candidates like Sharron Angle and Joe Miller nationwide. I'm curious to see how directly he goes after her, as having the president beat up on her will only play into her narrative of being the little guy against the machine. Coons has been savvy about that thus far, not attacking her personally for the 'witchcraft' nonsense, etc, but if The One's willing to go full jackass on the Chamber of Commerce, there's no reason to think he'll go easy on O'D."
Not long ago President Obama went to Connecticut to take on Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon, a stronger than expected opponent for Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. It was good...for McMahon.
Pray that President Obama, the ACORN man in the White House, makes the Saturday Night Live ridicule of O'Donnell seem like praise.
Maybe Team O'Donnell then will make ACORN an albatross that fits nicely around the neck of self-described "bearded Marxist" Coons.
Coons gave up the beard, but not the radicalness.
Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the author of Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism who tightly tied ACORN to the financial crisis before Election Day 2008, in "Obama's Radical Past: And his connection to socialism isn't all ancient history, either" (www.nationalreview.com/articles/249390/obama's-radical-past-stanley-kurtz):
"On the afternoon of April 1, 1983, Barack Obama, then a senior at Columbia University, made his way into the Great Hall of Manhattan's Cooper Union to attend a 'Socialist Scholars Conference.' There Obama discovered his vocation as a community organizer, as well as a political program to guide him throughout his life.
"The conference itself was not a secret, but it held a secret, for it was there that a demoralized and frustrated socialist movement largely set aside strategies of nationalization and turned increasingly to local organizing as a way around the Reagan presidency — and its own spotty reputation. In the early 1980s, America's socialists discovered what Saul Alinsky had always known: 'Community organizing' is a euphemism behind which advocates of a radical vision of America could advance their cause without the bothersome label 'socialist' drawing adverse attention to their efforts."
Kurtz concluded: "As we move into the first national election of the Obama presidency, Americans are confronted with a fateful choice. Either we will continue to be subject to President Obama's radical and only very partially revealed plans for our future, or we will place a strong check on the president's ambitions. Knowing the truth about Obama's past is the best way to safeguard our future."
O'Donnell can be a key part of that "strong check on the president's ambitions," IF she stands up to the ridicule heaped on her and uses her celebrity to call attention to what the liberal media establishment does not, about both Obama and Coons.
Kurtz noted that "[a]rchival documents reveal that Obama lied during the 2008 campaign about his ties to ACORN."
About the time Obama took the socialist path, Coons embraced radicalism.
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_A._Coons):
"During the campaign, a controversy arose surrounding an article Coons wrote in 1985 for his college newspaper, entitled 'Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist.' In it, he describes his transformation from a Republican to what FoxNews described as a 'Democrat suspicious of America's power and ideals.' Coons said his college anthropology courses had 'undermined the accepted value of progress and the cultural superiority of the West,' while coursework on the Vietnam War had led him to suspect that 'the ideal of America as a "beacon of freedom and justice, providing hope for the world" was not exactly based on reality.' He went on to state that his belief in the 'miracles of free enterprise and the boundless opportunities of America' may be untrue."
Message for Team O'Donnell: Delaware ACORN is worthy of your attention.
Coons served as President of the New Castle County Council (2001-2005) and County Executive of New Castle County since 2005.
ACORN wasn't publicly toxic then.
Americans need to know the whole truth about Obama, and Delawareans need to know the truth about Coons.
There's little time left for O'Donnell to turn around the race, but it can be turned around.
© Michael Gaynor
October 13, 2010
Either we will continue to be subject to President Obama's radical and only very partially revealed plans for our future, or we will place a strong check on the president's ambitions.
Tragically, Christine O'Donnell, Delaware's Republican Senate candidate who upset former two-term governor and nine-term Congressman Mike Castle for the Republican nomination, may give Karl Rove (who claimed that her victory decreased the chance that the Republicans will retake control of the United States Senate) the satisfaction of saying "I told you so" and make Bill O'Reilly the winner in his $5,000 bet with Laura Ingraham on the race for the benefit of charity.
Ingraham interviewed O'Donnell on her nationally syndicated radio show the morning after O'Donnell won the primary and then bet on O'Donnell to win.
A few days later O'Donnell suddenly canceled appearances on Sunday national television shows and then announced on Sean Hannity's television show that she would shun national media and conduct a local campaign.
Fortunately, Nevada's Republican Senate candidate, Sharron Angle, saw the wisdom of running a national campaign in challenging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. She raised $14,000,000 in the third quarter, primarily because contributors across America want Reid to lose.
Thanks (ironically) to Rove and (suitably) to Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh, O'Donnell raised more than $2,000,000 after winning the primary.
Unfortunately, O'Donnell did not highlight the fact that unlike all other Republican Senate hopefuls, she would join the upcoming lame duck session if she won, replacing an Obama Democrat, and thus be in position to thwart the radical agenda planned for that session.
That's a big deal. Now Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts raised $14,000,000 in a month (January 2010), because he was perceived as the 41st vote to block Obamacare.
Instead of focusing national attention on her unique opportunity to protect America in the lame duck session and depicting her radical opponent as a rubberstamp for Obama, the O'Donnell campaign has been preparing not effective commercials.
The first commercial featured the telegenic O'Donnell denying that she's a witch, confirming that nobody's perfect and insisting that she is whoever is watching the commercial.
The second commercial was worse: she said her opponent went to Yale and inherited millions of dollars, but she didn't.
The third commercial featured Coons as...the Tax Man. O'Donnell is not seen or heard in it. And, for reasons that anyone who remembers that the first President Bush was not re-elected after breaking his pledge against new taxes, the commercial does not mention that Coons broke promises not to raise taxes.
Allahpundit acknowledged that the O'Donnell campaign is still behind by 15 to 20 points, but hopefully put the best face on the latest commercial (http://hotair.com/archives/2010/10/12/new-christine-odonnell-ad-the-tax-man/):
"Can't go wrong attacking Democrats for snatching at voters' pocketbooks, even in a blue state. Fun stuff here, and noteworthy for how hard it strains to turn the focus of the election completely away from O'Donnell and towards Coons. Apart from the lightning-quick attribution at the end of the spot, her name is never mentioned; there's not even an 'I'm Christine O'Donnell and I approve this message' voiceover, which has become perfunctory in political ads ever since Bush started doing it in 2004. Coons wants the election to be a referendum on O'Donnell and O'Donnell wants the election to be a choice between her and Coons — a mirror image, ironically, of how the White House is treating the midterms nationally — and the only way to do that is to educate voters relentlessly about his record. If she's smart, she won't appear in another ad until election day. From now on, it's all Tax Man, all the time."
Alas, "all Tax Man, all the time" won't be enough for a candidate with no governmental service experience.
To have a chance to win, O'Donnell must expose Coons as an Obamaton radical, not a tax collector, and display herself as a feisty alternative who learned from her youthful indiscretions and promotes traditional American values that radicals reject.
Strangely, O'Donnell appears to be about to receive help from an unexpected source — President Obama.
Allahpundit:
"Obama's planning a trip to Delaware this Friday to campaign for [Coons].... The White House is in smear mode right now, so Obama's going to try to draw some extra attention to the tea-party 'witch' in hopes of discrediting TP candidates like Sharron Angle and Joe Miller nationwide. I'm curious to see how directly he goes after her, as having the president beat up on her will only play into her narrative of being the little guy against the machine. Coons has been savvy about that thus far, not attacking her personally for the 'witchcraft' nonsense, etc, but if The One's willing to go full jackass on the Chamber of Commerce, there's no reason to think he'll go easy on O'D."
Not long ago President Obama went to Connecticut to take on Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon, a stronger than expected opponent for Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. It was good...for McMahon.
Pray that President Obama, the ACORN man in the White House, makes the Saturday Night Live ridicule of O'Donnell seem like praise.
Maybe Team O'Donnell then will make ACORN an albatross that fits nicely around the neck of self-described "bearded Marxist" Coons.
Coons gave up the beard, but not the radicalness.
Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the author of Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism who tightly tied ACORN to the financial crisis before Election Day 2008, in "Obama's Radical Past: And his connection to socialism isn't all ancient history, either" (www.nationalreview.com/articles/249390/obama's-radical-past-stanley-kurtz):
"On the afternoon of April 1, 1983, Barack Obama, then a senior at Columbia University, made his way into the Great Hall of Manhattan's Cooper Union to attend a 'Socialist Scholars Conference.' There Obama discovered his vocation as a community organizer, as well as a political program to guide him throughout his life.
"The conference itself was not a secret, but it held a secret, for it was there that a demoralized and frustrated socialist movement largely set aside strategies of nationalization and turned increasingly to local organizing as a way around the Reagan presidency — and its own spotty reputation. In the early 1980s, America's socialists discovered what Saul Alinsky had always known: 'Community organizing' is a euphemism behind which advocates of a radical vision of America could advance their cause without the bothersome label 'socialist' drawing adverse attention to their efforts."
Kurtz concluded: "As we move into the first national election of the Obama presidency, Americans are confronted with a fateful choice. Either we will continue to be subject to President Obama's radical and only very partially revealed plans for our future, or we will place a strong check on the president's ambitions. Knowing the truth about Obama's past is the best way to safeguard our future."
O'Donnell can be a key part of that "strong check on the president's ambitions," IF she stands up to the ridicule heaped on her and uses her celebrity to call attention to what the liberal media establishment does not, about both Obama and Coons.
Kurtz noted that "[a]rchival documents reveal that Obama lied during the 2008 campaign about his ties to ACORN."
About the time Obama took the socialist path, Coons embraced radicalism.
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_A._Coons):
"During the campaign, a controversy arose surrounding an article Coons wrote in 1985 for his college newspaper, entitled 'Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist.' In it, he describes his transformation from a Republican to what FoxNews described as a 'Democrat suspicious of America's power and ideals.' Coons said his college anthropology courses had 'undermined the accepted value of progress and the cultural superiority of the West,' while coursework on the Vietnam War had led him to suspect that 'the ideal of America as a "beacon of freedom and justice, providing hope for the world" was not exactly based on reality.' He went on to state that his belief in the 'miracles of free enterprise and the boundless opportunities of America' may be untrue."
Message for Team O'Donnell: Delaware ACORN is worthy of your attention.
Coons served as President of the New Castle County Council (2001-2005) and County Executive of New Castle County since 2005.
ACORN wasn't publicly toxic then.
Americans need to know the whole truth about Obama, and Delawareans need to know the truth about Coons.
There's little time left for O'Donnell to turn around the race, but it can be turned around.
© Michael Gaynor
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