Christine O’Donnell won’t have to lie about this Senate race. She won the Republican nomination for the Senate in Delaware fair and square, against a much more experienced, much more moderate, much more respected opponent, nine-term congressman and former governor Mike Castle. Now that she’s the nominee, the Republican Party will likely abandon the woman the chairman of the Delaware GOP recently said “could not be elected dog catcher.” Perhaps, in addition to all the things that have already come out about O’Donnell  tax questions, misuse of campaign funds, a trail of lies, some interesting thoughts on masturbation  they know how much remains left uncovered. Such as that, on March 30 of 1996, in her role as the spokeswoman for the Concerned Women of America, O’Donnell debated the merits of evolution on CNN, and she was not a fan.

This was during one of our country’s periodic debates over teaching creationism in schools. In a discussion moderated by anchor Miles O’Brien, O’Donnell squared off against Michael McKinney, a University of Tennessee professor of evolutionary biology. Not only was O’Donnell in favor of teaching creationism alongside evolution, but she wasn’t even sure evolution was real. According to a transcript, via Nexis:

CHRISTINE O’ DONNELL , Concerned Women for America: Well, as the senator from Tennessee mentioned, evolution is a theory and it’s exactly that. There is not enough evidence, consistent evidence to make it as fact, and I say that because for theory to become a fact, it needs to consistently have the same results after it goes through a series of tests. The tests that they put — that they use to support evolution do not have consistent results. Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it’s merely a theory. But creation —



Whoops. Technically, evolution is a theory in the scientific-nomenclature sense, but it’s so widely accepted by every legitimate scientist in the world that it is considered fact. Not enough evidence? Tests with inconsistent results? It sounds like she’s talking about rumors that Lady Gaga has a penis, not a basic foundation of biology. What’s with all the dubiousness?

CHRISTINE O’ DONNELL : Now, he said that it’s based on fact. I just want to point out a couple things. First of all, they use carbon dating, as an example, to prove that something was millions of years old. Well, we have the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens and the carbon dating test that they used then would have to then prove that these were hundreds of millions of years younger, when what happened was they had the exact same results on the fossils and canyons that they did the tests on that were supposedly 100 millions of years old. And it’s the kind of inconsistent tests like this that they’re basing their ‘facts’ on.



We Googled this and apparently it refers to some tests run by a guy at the Institute for Creation Research. Definitely the kind of stuff on which you want to pin your refutation of evolution. Well, at least O’Donnell didn’t claim that there is just as much or more evidence for creationism as there is for evolution, right?

CHRISTINE O’ DONNELL : Well, creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that.



Spit take! Ladies and gentlemen of Delaware, your Republican Senate nominee.