She has been a professional candidate, and nothing else, for the last five years. In her latest campaign for the Republican senatorial nomination she virtually said her opponent – a long time respected former governor and congressman – was a drag queen. She said a trip to the Mideast – where Islam is big – was refreshing because one wasn’t bombarded by smut. She said the President of the United States, Barack Obama, is anti-American because he doesn’t want to make English the official language. She says taking prayer out of school in the 60s led to all the school shootings in the 90s.

And she thinks there’s too much money being used to fight AIDS, handing out condoms in schools instead of Bibles only encourages wanton sex. And in perhaps her most revealing statement of principle, declared jerking off is cheating on your significant other.

Here’s a woman who says what she thinks. All of what she thinks.

And so one can readily assume, given this rather bizarre set of platform planks, what disaster befell that campaign.

That’s right. Christine O’Donnell won the Republican nomination for the U. S. Senate of Delaware.

Her idiocy, past and present, has made her a national figure, with millions of dollars flowing into her campaign – some of which will be used to pay her living expenses, being homeless and all. She does have a record of sorts, and most of it is in living color on You Tube. Even the old right-wingers (now called “Socialists”) are wondering what the heck went wrong. Couldn’t she start off like any other self respecting right wing Christian freak fascist, and wreck a school board before moving up the ladder? Oops. I can answer my own question: she isn’t qualified for school board.

And so Christine O’Donnell of Delaware enters the mighty pantheon of Republican women of questionable brilliance, each seeming to lower the bar for the next. Sarah Palin, of course, remains the gold standard of the fasci-chicks. She seized her moment thanks to a yet another lapse in conscience by John McCain. She has not appeared to be any wiser, nor anymore of a reader since her fateful days being filleted by Katie Couric and or Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live. She’s not even a governor anymore. But she is now a fixture on the Fox Propaganda Channel, where everybody knows her name. Most importantly, she invited herself to the tea party, and never left.

Michele Bachmann was already on the scene, quietly disserving a congressional district in Minnesota. But now, perhaps emboldened by Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy, she has come out off the backbench and into the front microphone banks.

Then in rapid succession we experienced Arizona’s xenophobic Jan Brewer, whose own brain freeze at a recent gubernatorial debate made it rather ironic that she went on to talk about headless people.

Then the great state of Nevada had its own private “don’t got talent” faceoff when first the chicken-for-medical services lady, Sue Lowden emerged, whose bizarre tone deafness seemed perfectly “tea partyish” enough for us… but, lo, to her misfortune (which is interesting since Lowden owns a casino), she was quickly trumped and shoved back into obscurity when challenged by the even crazier “let’s get rid of Social Security, and “let’s use the 2nd amendment remedy as a cure for Harry Reid” lady, Sharron Angle. Suddenly chickens-for-chicken-pox seemed kind of a reasonable, but the “r” word is the kiss of death.

And of course there are guy members of the kookie candidates club – Rand Paul in Kentucky, Ken Buck in Colorado, and Joe Miller – Palin’s heir apparent in Alaska.

But the flavor of the moment is O’Donnell; liberals are merely cautiously smiling because her defeated opponent Mike Castle presented a more formidable adversary. But it is none other than party loyalist Karl Rove who has become unglued about the unglued Delaware candidate. He’s so unglued about her, virtually delivering the Demoratic campaign against her, that one wonders what the hell is really going on with him. Perhaps it is a clue that the faux tea party-driven “revolution” within the Republican Party has gone into the inevitable “reign of terror” phase; now the genuine evildoers like Rove are seeing the natural extension of their scheming gone berserko. The tea infused tiger they thought they had by the tail is clawing the hell out of the old schoolers because they simply never went far enough – probably stilted by all that thinky stuff.

But getting back to Christine O’Donnell… the verb jerking off – which can also be a noun (“that guy is a jerk-off” heard a lot in Scorsese gangster movies ) – is also slang for general dawdling, time wasting – generally avoiding the more pressing issues at hand. So perhaps all this talk of masturbation, jerking off if you will permit vulgarity on these pages, is a clue to the general Republican strategy. To muse further, it is not lost on many the coincidence that one of the earliest, and current, string pullers (as it were) in this “tea party” faux grassroots “movement” is one Dick Armey. Dick Armey. An unusual name, and giving rise to an unusual visual.

But I dawdle.

It was indeed a dick army of Dick Armey that was first bussed in to bust up those town halls – including, as if in preview, that of Mike Castle – discussing health care reform in the famous Screams of August. And thus was unleashed the Frankenstein monster, unwittingly doing the dirty work on behalf of corporate masters and manipulators like Armey, the Koch Brothers (evidently the new Richard Melon-Scaiffe).

But the danger of course is the monster getting un-unwitting, and starting to develop plans of its own. They may be bizarro, but not even Diebold can stop fired up xenophobic religified voters voting for them.

As in all great horror movies, the bad guy has to get punished. So it was in Frankenstein. The monster inevitably turns on its creator who realizes he has lost all control, and devours him. Likewise it is entirely possible that in this particular horror movie played out across the country, the monsters will devour the creators – and while loosed upon the populace will create havoc for awhile, then inevitably implode, once voters start paying attention and stop playing with themselves in the various ways people do to avoid the realities that confront them.

So there may be true hope for the progressives, who have been told relentlessly by the right wing megaphone, and Chris Matthews, that Democrats are cruising for a bruising in November. Perhaps, as if by one of those miracles that sometimes happen in American politics, these fasci-chicks and their male counterparts will upset that particular apple cart.

But is that serious reason for optimism, or am I merely jerking off?

Robert Illes

Robert Illes is an Emmy winning television writer and producer, currently developing series for Nickelodeon and TV Land. He is an LA native, and a graduate of USC, who lived in Sherman Oaks for 23 years before escaping to Santa Monica (but visits a lot). A member of Valley Democrats United, Bob is also an AirAmericaRadio freak, active in the Writers Guild mentor program, as well as the Democratic Party, and is constantly Bush bashing, fighting for verifiable voting procedures, and fighting against Jerry’s Deli showing Fox News on their overhead TVs. What’s the matter with those people!?

Reposted with permission from the Valley Dems United Newsletter, Margie Murray, Editor.

