Fresh from knocking off the GOP establishment's candidate in this week's Delaware Senate primary, Christine O'Donnell just wowed a gathering of conservatives here with a feisty us-against-them speech.

In her first Washington appearance since her upset win over veteran Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., O'Donnell mocked the capital's "cocktail crowd" for writing off conservative insurgents as "aging Reagan staffers and home schoolers."

"They call us wacky," she said. "They call us wingnuts."

But conservatives have shaken off the "despondency and outright fear" they experienced after President Obama's election, O'Donnell said. She thinks she can win the Senate seat that Vice President Biden occupied for 37 years before joining the Obama administration because "there are more of us than there are of them."

O'Donnell used her speech to slam the Obama administration's economic stimulus as a "Keynesian fantasy" and "the green police" who "want to tell you what kind of toilet you can flush and what kind of car you can drive."

Government regulators "will buy your teenage daughter an abortion, but they won't let her buy a sugary drink from the high school vending machine," she said.

O'Donnell, who claims on her website to have raised $1.5 million in campaign contributions since her primary win on Tuesday, is sharing the wealth with conservatives here. She's headlining a fundraiser this evening for the Family Research Council. Tickets are $100 each.

Her appearance capped a day in which conservative activists heard from a parade of potential 2012 GOP presidential contenders: former governors Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney; Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; and Reps. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Mike Pence, R-Ind.

(Posted by Kathy Kiely)