With only seven weeks until the midterm elections, the Republican Party is now widely believed to have a very good shot at taking control of the House of Representatives, and at least the possibility of wresting power away from the Democrats in the Senate. Nate Silver gives them a 25 percent chance of winning the upper chamber, while Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics says the Senate is “on the bubble.” But success in flipping Delaware’s Democratically controlled (and formerly Joe Biden–occupied) seat would be essential to winning a majority in the Senate, and it’s looking increasingly likely that instead of nominating longtime moderate congressman Mike Castle tomorrow who leads Democratic nominee Chris Coons, according to polls Republican voters may pick tea-party insurgent Christine O’Donnell, who is trailing Coons, perhaps because she is kind of nuts, and lies all the time.
So what do you need to know about O’Donnell, who became the tea party’s new cause after its success with Joe Miller in Alaska?
• She believes that masturbating or looking at pornography is tantamount to adultery.
• She recently said of Castle’s campaign:
They’re following me. They follow me home at night. I make sure that I come back to the townhouse and then we have our team come out and check all the bushes and check all the cars to make sure that—they follow me.
• She claimed that when she ran against Joe Biden in 2008, she won two of Delaware’s three counties. In reality, she hadn’t won any. When this discrepancy was pointed out by a radio host, O’Donnell claimed that she had actually tied Biden in one of them. Still not true.
• Though she had previously claimed to have graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University, O’Donnell only received her degree 10 days ago.
• In 2005 she sued a conservative nonprofit organization for $6.9 million for gender discrimination and wrongful termination. She dropped the lawsuit in 2008.
• On financial-disclosure forms, she claimed to only have earned $5,800 last year.
We can’t imagine what the Republican Party has against this woman.
