The Tea Party Lays Siege on Washington

Though unknown in the political scene, Christine O’Donnell, whose victory this week in the Delaware primaries has shaken the United States, counts on a long and intense activity in the battle to restore the strict Calvinist morals in society, which apparently has been conquered by perversion and lust.

In 1996, only 27 years old, O’Donnell created an organization in Los Angeles that went by the name of The Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth, whose principal objective was the promotion of chastity. Since then, O’Donnell has been a frequent participant in public events, academic debates or talk shows on Fox to condemn pornography, masturbation and homosexuality. She has criticized federal aid going to the fight against AIDS, which she considers an appropriate penance for the sin of promiscuity, and has defended that the most appropriate role for a woman is as a wife and mother, devoted to the peace and contentment of her husband.

O’Donnell is a symbol among some representatives of Generation X that believe in the urgent restoration of certain values which have been buried by the hippie generation, feminism or the simple continuation of humanity. She is, in a way, a leader of an alternative model for youth.

The flamboyant candidate for the Senate is therefore a woman even physically similar to its main supporter, Sarah Palin, who serves perfectly as an example, a coarse and brutal example, of that against which the Democratic Party claims to fight in the November midterm elections.

It has always been easier to fight against a person than an idea. The tea party, with all its radicalism and obscene messages, is an idea and, in a certain form, an attractive message of individual freedom to confront the arrogance of the state. O’Donnell, and the various other O’Donnells that have emerged as a consequence of the tea party’s victories in numerous primaries in the last year, show the realization of this idea didn’t turn out to be so attractive. In fact, although 40 percent of Independent voters share the beliefs of the tea party, according to a survey by The Economist less than a quarter support the party’s leader.

The Democratic propaganda machinery has swung into action with the peculiar biographies of O’Donnell and other similar candidates that will be circulated extensively until November. “The best spokesperson to win votes for Andrew Cuomo is Carl Paladino. Our strategy is to just let him talk,” a campaign manager of Cuomo reported to The New York Times. Cuomo is the Democratic candidate for governor of New York, and his Republican opponent, Paladino, is another reputed member of the tea party that won the nomination on Tuesday.

Paladino, an eccentric character and a bully like something out of an episode of The Sopranos, on one occasion referred to a political rival as the Antichrist and has vowed to come to the Albany-based New York government armed with a baseball bat to arrange things his way.

Similar stories will circulate in the following days in respect to other candidates of the tea party, the majority of whom are people without political experience, arising from the base of rural and primitive conservatism that represents a threat to the establishment in Washington, but also a challenge to common sense everywhere in the country.

The unqualified nature of their rivals is no guarantee that Barack Obama’s party will be able to contradict the black paint that paints the polls in November. Fifty-nine percent of Americans, according to a survey this week by The New York Times and CBS, believe the president has a clear plan for solving the problems of the nation. Along with that, it is clear that conservative voters are more motivated than their rivals, as evidenced by the fact that for the first time in more than 70 years, more Republicans than Democrats have been involved in these recent primaries.

But the personal factor, credibility, can still lessen the blow of November. Despite all odds, 45 percent of the population supports Obama’s conduct, while less than 30 percent would trust Palin as president, according to a survey by The Wall Street Journal.

Obama will therefore engage himself personally in the battle that follows; a battle in which, thanks to the advance of the tea party, the White House is trying to establish crude terms of progress against retrogression, moderation against extremism, security against uncertainty. “It’s obvious that Republicans are choosing candidates that are far from mainstream opinion,” recalled presidential spokesperson Robert Gibbs.*

From this point of view, the campaign presents an easier plan of attack for Obama. The president up until now has faced a wave of unrest due to an economic crisis that he had not created, but that he has not been able to resolve quickly enough. He faced frustration due to an administration that was bleaker than that which was foreseen, and the devaluing of several achievements — the health reforms, the financial reforms, the improvement of human rights — misunderstood by the electorate. He faced ghosts which were very difficult to overthrow and that kept giving power to the opposition.

Something has changed this week. The same Republicans now have to resolve their civil war in order to send citizens one single and constructive message. The Democrats have not reverted to the tendency that brought them to defeat, but have been able to bring questions to the public that will make them think. Do they want to lower taxes for the rich or for the middle class? Do they want to return power to those that created the current economic crisis? Do they want to leave Congress in the hands of Christine O’Donnell?

*Editor’s note: This quote, accurately translated, could not be verified.