Christine O'Donnell: We're Not "Wingnuts"
While Christine O’Donnell’s speech may not be accurate in a factual sense, it was accurate in capturing the emotional zeitgeist of the Tea Party. The thesis of the speech: O’Donnell is just like the Tea Party Movement, ridiculed by elites and set to return the country to its foundational documents. While the facts in the speech may not always align with reality, for the people in the auditorium, it felt like it did.
O’Donnell said that Tea Partiers are mocked by the media as “wingnuts” and portrayed by the media as “an aging crowd of Reagan staffers and home-schoolers.” I’ve never heard them referred to that way, but it was effective and funny.
She lamented the morality of modern society, “They’ll buy your teenage daughter an abortion, but they won’t let her buy a soda in the school vending machine.” Perhaps an update on Irving Kristol’s comment that “In the United States today, the law insists that an 18-year-old girl has the right to public fornication in a pornographic movie--but only if she is paid the minimum wage.” It was a winning line, capturing both fiscal conservatism and social conservatism in just twenty words.
She told the story of her life of academic hardship, “I never had to worry about where to dock my yacht to reduce my taxes.” Attacks on John Kerry can still be funny six years later.
She spoke about the fall of the Berlin Wall, and how we knew there was a victory when “The Golden Arches went up in Moscow.” In addition to praising McDonalds, she also lauded how “Small businesses became national chains” including Wal-Mart.
And while liberals have been busy mocking the conference for having pro-Israel panels even though no Jews can attend it due to Yom Kippur, O’Donnell even managed to tie the themes of the Jewish holiday into the Tea Party, describing the movement as engaging in “Constitutional Repentance.”
Sure the speech went into strange places, but it was remarkable to hear a speech actually different from the tired and repeated lines about bailouts, Obamacare, and stimulus. Whoever wrote it went out of their way to make it stand out.
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