America’s Right-Wing Rebels

The tea party is crisscrossing America with the rhetoric of protest. In Delaware, Christine O’Donnell is engaged in a flag-waving struggle against Barack Obama and in the process is undermining Republicans.

The mild autumn sunshine and the colors of a brilliant Indian Summer bathe the University of Delaware campus in a soft light. The image could not be in sharper contrast to the seething anger of tea party activists who have gathered on the university square, waving blue banners, just prior to the television debate between their candidate and the “Taxman.”

“Christine O’Donnell is one of us. She has common sense; she has suffered through many of the same things we have.”* That’s how Skip Newback describes the Republican candidate for the Senate seat Joe Biden held for 35 years. Tax problems and irregularities with her home mortgage were what put Newback, a retired electronics storeowner, in her corner. He describes her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, as a tax-and-spend career politician and a member of the Gore-Tex family who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

O’Donnell failed spectacularly in her 2008 bid to unseat Biden. But this year she won the Republican nomination for the same seat, running as a crass outsider with Sarah Palin’s blessing and the financial support of the Tea Party Express, the Republican establishment’s rank and file preference. As saucy as she is telegenic, she succeeded in casting ex-governor and longtime congressman Mike Castle as a “rino” — Republican In Name Only.

The primary election result came as a shock to the GOP, especially when O’Donnell announced, “I’ve had to fight my party to be here on this stage to win the nomination, and to some extent I am still fighting my party.” The polls had Castle far out in front of Coons and Republicans were already counting on a mandated majority in the Senate. Campaign mastermind Karl Rove reacted indignantly, bitterly declaring that O’Donnell wasn’t even qualified to run for dogcatcher. But the 41-year-old Palin clone’s popularity has taken several hits lately and Coons now has a clear lead just two weeks prior to election day.

With a witch’s hat

While anti-Coons propaganda sprang from a joke article in a student newspaper referring to him as “a bearded Marxist,” O’Donnell was becoming infamous for reported dishonesty concerning her student debts, irregularities in her campaign finances and particularly for her own past statements. Her appearances on Bill Maher’s television show “Politically Incorrect” in the late 1990s caused a brief furor. In some appearances, she delivered broadsides against evolution and masturbation; in others she boasted about experimenting with witchcraft and Satanism. She was promptly lampooned on “Saturday Night Live” wearing a witch’s hat and riding a flying broom. Jokers on campus are already running around in witch costumes — a preview of the coming Halloween.

Like Sarah Palin in the 2008 presidential campaign, she quickly became a laughingstock. “Palin is a genius compared to her,” complained Leonard Simon, owner of a women’s clothing store in Wilmington. “She’s crazy and she’s making Delaware look ridiculous.”* With a population of 885,000, Delaware is one of the smallest of the 50 states and is principally known as being the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Now it’s been suddenly catapulted into the national spotlight.

O’Donnell countered with a campaign ad in which she claims, “I’m not a witch, I’m you… I’ll go to Washington and do what you’d do.” In her debate with Coons, she was far from concise in expressing her concerns: “But regardless of my personal faith, when I go down to Washington, D.C., it is the Constitution that I will defend and it is by the Constitution that I will make all of my decisions, and that will be the standard-bearer for every piece of legislation that I will vote on.”

This credo binds her to dozens of other tea party candidates who are undermining the Republicans, driving them ever further to the extreme right. This inhomogenous protest movement swept Libertarian eye doctor Rand Paul in Kentucky, attorney Joe Miller in Alaska and perennial Nevada political candidate Sharron Angle into the limelight, against the wishes of the party elites and under Sarah Palin’s patronage. They demonize healthcare reform and social security and they include loonies like Rich Iott of Ohio, who has a liking for Nazi uniforms. They also include ordinary parvenus like real estate millionaire Carl Paladino from New York, who sent out emails depicting President Obama and his wife Michelle as a pimp and his prostitute. He’s given to grabbing unwanted reporters by the collar and screaming, “I’m mad as hell!”

Populist furor

On the afternoon of February 19, CNBC reporter Rick Santelli expressed his anger at the Chicago Stock Exchange live and on camera: “Are you listening, Mr. President? We’re starting a tea party here.” In protesting a program to assist homeowners, he reached back to the myth surrounding the founding of the United States when rebels against British taxation policy dumped a cargo of tea into Boston Harbor — the moment of birth for the American Revolution. Tea party groups suddenly shot up like mushrooms from the earth. Their relentless populist rhetoric has been directed against Barack Obama’s coolness ever since.

“I was never politically active but I was tired of shouting at the television set. I had to do something,” says biochemist Leslie, adding, “I’m not a Republican, I’m a conservative.”* Theresa Garcia, founder of the “9/12 Delaware Patriots” — an invention of Fox News television talk show host Glenn Beck — who lost her job as a real estate agent in the economic downturn, thinks the nation needs another Ronald Reagan.

At a Rotarian luncheon the other day in the great hall of the DuPont Hotel in Wilmington, the audience listened as Christine O’Donnell addressed them. It should have been a home game for Mike Castle, but out of loyalty even Republican notables like ex-governor Pete Dupont have become resigned to the tea party phenomenon.

*Editor’s note: These quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.