This blog was a huge Christine O’Donnell booster, back when. No regrets. But one can’t let this fact pass un-touted, emphasis mine:
The Christine O’Donnell thing really did happen more or less by accident, because she happened to be in the right place at the right time to catch an anti-establishment wave and win a primary in which she was supposed to be a protest candidate. Whereas the Davis experiment was intentionally designed: She was treated to fawning press coverage, lavished with funding, had the primary field mostly cleared for her, and was touted repeatedly as part of an actual party strategy for competing in a conservative-leaning state. Of course she had a much more impressive resume than O’Donnell, with less witchcraft and real political experience, and in that sense she made a more credible candidate overall. (Though, ahem, O’Donnell actually outperformed Davis at the polls in the end …)
Former Delaware Tea Party candidate and “witch” Christine O’Donnell has issued a press release which has been picked up by ABC News, Yahoo News, DailyKos, et al… announcing Christine O’Donnell to Stage Tea Party vs. Occupy Debate in Tampa at Channelside Cinemas 10 IMAX Theater in Tampa, Florida just one block from the Tampa Bay Times Forum, site of the Republican National Convention. Problem is Christine O’Donnell was told in a conference call Thursday evening she could not use the Tea Party vs Occupy or the Occupy vs Tea Party name because both are trademarked and copy righted by Gordon G.G. Gebert, creator of the reality TV Show of the same name.
During the Thursday conference call O’Donnell was attempting to reach a broadcasting deal with The Young Turks while representing that she was the creator and owner of the trademark. Despite repeatedly being told by the Trademark & Copyright owner she could not use his brand in her Tampa event, O’Donnell decided she wanted to take her chances in litigation and told Gebert, “sue me.” According to spokesperson for Mr. Gebert after becoming aware of O’Donnell’s press release by email which was picked up by ABC News, Yahoo News, Huffington Post, and others; Attorney’s for Mr. Gebert will file the necessary documents to obtain a restraining order prohibiting O’Donnell from proceeding with the unauthorized use of his trademark brand to promote her event.
Read the whole thing. Is this a serious legal throw-down? Has O’Donnell attempted to rip off Gordon’s idea? Whatever it is, it has now added the vital element of controversy to the story and, in the news business, nothing is more valuable than controversy:
Christine O’Donnell, the former Republican Senate candidate and a tea party favorite during the 2010 election, has officially endorsed Mitt Romney for president. . . . O’Donnell made clear that the Romney campaign did not “come to her,” and that she went to the campaign. She said she would be willing to go out and campaign for Romney.
In a written statement, Romney welcomed the endorsement. “Christine has been a leader in the conservative movement for many years,” Romney said. “Christine recognizes that excessive government threatens us now and threatens future generations, and I am pleased to have her on my team.”
Meanwhile, in Iowa, Rick Santorum’s hard work paid off with a valuable endorsement:
Des Moines City Councilman
Halley Griess Joins The Fight! Urbandale, IA – Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum announced that he has received the endorsement of Des Moines, IA City Councilman Halley Griess.
Councilman Griess said, “Rick Santorum has worked harder than any other candidate in garnering the support of the voters I represent. In visiting all 99 counties, and appearing in Iowa more frequently than any other candidate, it is clear that Rick Santorum cares about the individual voters and is willing to invest in the issues they care about. He has clearly demonstrated that he will head to Washington with our families and small business owners in mind. Rick Santorum best reflects the values of Iowa voters and I am honored today to give my support to him.”
Senator Santorum said: “Iowans can’t be bought by TV ads, Iowa votes must be earned. Councilman Griess knows this from his direct work with his constituents in Des Moines. Councilman Griess is a true public servant and I am thrilled to receive his endorsement today. I look forward to working with Halley as we continue our momentum statewide and in Polk County.”
Des Moines, IA City Councilman Halley Griess was elected to the Des Moines City Council in 2009, as the youngest serving Councilman in Des Moines’ history at age 23. He is the son of a self-employed, small business owner and a graduate of Drake University Law School.
(Hat-tip: Lisa Graas) By the way, we got three contributions last night via our Rick Santorum “No Surrender” Money Bomb link, for a total of $80 — that’s 20% of our $400 goal for this three-day event that continues through Friday. The link takes you to a Fundly.com page, which is just a system for tracking which site the contributions came through. The money all goes straight to the Santorum campaign, and here’s a neutral objective fact: They need every dollar you can spare.
In other campaign news, on a conference call with the Santorum campaign’s grassroots supporters last night, their Iowa political director said that the senator’s teenage son John Santorum was in the Urbandale campaign office yesterday stuffing envelopes to send out to undecided Republican voters. The senator’s daughter Elizabeth has also been working in the Urbandale office this week.
The Santorum campaign has a solid “ground game” organization in Iowa, and has already signed up more than 450 “caucus captains,” who are the volunteer leaders at each caucus location. If you’re not in Iowa, you can still help the Santorum campaign in Iowa: Sign up as a volunteer at their Web site and take part in their “phone from home” operation.
“We should learn a lesson from what happened in my race last year. I was consistently beating my democratic opponent in the pre-primary head to head match up and then the Republican Establishment launched their shameless attack and changed all that,” said O’Donnell. “As the saying goes, a lie runs around the world while the truth is still lacing up its shoes.”
“Right now, I’m 70 percent behind Romney,” she said. “I will absolutely max out if he’s the nominee.”
The blog applauds O’Donnell’s decision to learn from the past, without being imprisoned therein. Would that I had had such wisdom in my younger years. We can bicker and argue over ‘oo is shinier than ‘oo during through the primaries, but, after that, it’s time to retire BHO.
More at Sussex County Angel.
One of the undeniable truths about Christine O’Donnell’s 2010 Delaware Senate campaign is that many Republicans wanted her to lose. Months before most Americans ever heard of O’Donnell, leading members of the GOP Establishment had invested their influence and prestige in attempting to ensure that nine-term Rep. Mike Castle would be the Republican nominee. Much as they had in Florida — where the state party chairman and the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, had arranged an early endorsement for Charlie Crist – the Establishment lined up early behind Castle.
From the very outset of her 2010 campaign, O’Donnell found herself fighting off savage attacks from Republicans, including false accusations included in an opposition-research dossier distributed to reporters. With the support of Tea Party activists, O’Donnell scored an upset victory over Castle in the primary, but by then her reputation was badly damaged by the unrelenting assaults from the GOP Establishment. And talk about the need for “party unity” – which had been often heard from Establishment leaders when they had thought their liberal friend Castle would win the primary – was forgotten the moment O’Donnell emerged as the GOP nominee. Continue reading Troublemaker: Karl Rove vs. O’Donnell →
Making the media rounds to promote her new book Troublemaker, 2012 Delaware senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell appeared on CNN with Piers Morgan, who decided that he needed to grill O’Donnell about masturbation and whether she had “committed lust”:
What an annoying twerp. This is not only offensive, it’s boring.
There are far more interesting questions I’d like to ask Christine O’Donnell, and it has been suggested that I should interview her, but I’m probably still too angry at her — yes, I said “angry.”
It goes back to the morning of Sept. 15, the day after her triumph over RINO Mike Castle in the GOP primary. There were several of us — including O’Donnell and her campaign manager, Matt Moran — standing around the lobby of the Fairfield Inn in Dover, Delaware. And I distinctly remember telling Matt that what they needed to do, having recently reaped a bonanza of online contributions, was to come out with an attack ad hitting their Democratic opponent Chris Coons as hard as they could.
Hit him hard and hit him now, I told Matt. Make the campaign about him and his record — Coons raised taxes three time in four years — or else the Democrats would make the campaign about Christine, and we’d already seen enough of those old MTV/Maher videos to know how that would turn out.
They didn’t listen. For reasons that have never been adequately explained to me, instead the O’Donnell campaign brought in Fred Davis who took three weeks to produce the now-notorious “I’m You” ad. I defended that ad at the time, but I was still furious that the O’Donnell team had missed the opportunity to turn Coons’s tax-raising record into an ad, as I wrote on October 5:
Having some relevant experience with video production, I bet it wouldn’t take 48 hours for anyone with access to Final Cut Pro to turn those basic facts [of Coons’s record] into a hard-hitting 30-second ad. And had I been in charge of the O’Donnell campaign, saturating the Delaware TV market with that attack ad would have been Priority One. Yet here we are three weeks after the primary, and it hasn’t been done yet. So where is the attack ad making that argument?
They could have (and should have) hit Coons with a barrage of attack ads within a week of their Sept. 14 primary victory but didn’t, and as a result O’Donnell became the poster girl for an endless round of “told you so” smears on the Tea Party by the GOP Establishment.
And it also cost me a bet with John Fund.
Like I said, I’m still angry about it, and when the publicist for O’Donnell’s book caught me at Ames last week and pitched me, I went off on a three-minute rant about how O’Donnell’s campaign botched that opportunity.
“Fred F–ing Davis!” I yelled. “What the hell were they thinking?”
Maybe the explanation is in her book, but the publicist still hasn’t sent me the book, so I don’t know. However, if Christine O’Donnell wants to name names of whatever consultants or advisers told her to hire Fred Davis, I’d certainly be interested to find out, because those incompetent assclowns deserve to be exposed and humiliated for their embarrassing blunder. But I suppose she’d rather talk to George Stephanopoulos.
Alan Colmes must know someone at St. Martin’s Press, because he’s reporting a Christine O’Donnell book with the title “Trouble Maker” that isn’t even available for pre-order on Amazon. The questions I have are:
Why she gave up politics for biography?
Why did she pick Stacy McCain for her first subject?
Yeah, I’m confident it’s a political book. But how was I supposed to pass up a riff like that, I ask you?
4. Christine O’Donnell is a no-hoper in the primary. I wasn’t confident enough in that one to make the prediction publicly, but I did dissuade an intern from writing a piece that took her ability to beat Mike Castle seriously. Oops! Though in my defense, it was before she caught on with conservatives nationally — the prerequisite for a successful Tea Party challenge this year.
O’Donnell’s upset win in the GOP primary seemed to me such a miracle I thought it would provide the kind of Cinderella-story momentum that would carry her to victory in November.
That didn’t work out so well. Nevertheless, no regrets.
What I can’t understand, however, is why my buddy Jim Antle would “dissuade an intern from writing a piece that took her ability to beat Mike Castle seriously.” What’s wrong with doing a serious story about a long-shot underdog?
If you surrender to that kind of “inevitability” thinking, then front-runner status becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, doesn’t it? Besides which, it’s possible to do a story about an underdog that takes his candidacy seriously while at the same time acknowledging the long odds against him. Maybe that kind of reporting is beyond the skill level of an intern, but it can be done.
