At some point, the Tea Party stalwarts are going to have to accept the fact that Christine O’Donnell is an untrustworthy, credential fabricating dud, much like Mark Kirk, the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Illinois who has been caught embellishing his resume with fantasy and exaggeration.
O’Donnell is arguably even worse than Kirk. She claimed for years that she had graduated from college before she actually finished her course work. At another time, she suggested she was seeking a Master’s degree at Princeton, but later admitted that she hadn’t taken a single Princeton graduate course.
O’Donnell’s LinkedIn bio page lists University of Oxford as one of the schools she has attended, where, she says, she studied “Post Modernism in the New Millennium.” The course was really conducted by something called the Phoenix Institute, which merely rented space at Oxford. When the Washington Post contacted the woman who oversaw Phoenix Institute’s summer program at Oxford she agreed that O’Donnell’s claim about studying at Oxford was “misleading.”
I know that O’Donnell is an attractive dark horse candidate in theory, and that her ultra conservative views on social issues and fiscal responsibility warm the cockles of Tea Party hearts. But integrity and honesty dictate that she be held to some basic ethical standards. It is already clear that O’Donnell has misused campaign contributions, perhaps criminally so. Now it is clear that she tries to sneak fake credentials by the press and those who support her, which is proof of both dishonesty and a cement head.
The Tea Party would gain a measure of respect, at least from me, if they had the courage and principle to declare that a young woman who can’t balance a checkbook and lies repeatedly about her education is not a good candidate to fix what ails Washington, or fix anything at all, except maybe a horse race.
She’s terrible, guys. Give it up.
UPDATE: The very next day after this was written, it was discovered that another educational credential on O’Donnell’s profile was false. Talking Points Memo revealed that…
“Claremont Graduate University tells TPM that Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell did not attend the Southern California school despite listing it under education on her LinkedIn profile…Turns out O’Donnell did receive a fellowship from a conservative think tank named the Claremont Institute, also in Claremont, Ca. but not affiliated with Claremont Graduate University.”
If O’Donnell and her supporters play to form, they will accuse the media and political foes of “distorting her record.” This is pretty brazen, as the only one distorting O’Donnell’s record is O’Donnell.
A lot.
Ethics Alarms 
But Jack she’s cute. 🙂
She IS cute. That almost makes up for her ridiculous statements and general ignorance, but the dishonesty is too much.
Oh, c’mon, guys. Cute is just what you don’t want in office. It doesn’t age well, and nothing ages cute so fast and so badly as politics — except maybe wood alcohol. Let them put her up. In a short while, when she begins to resemble her comtemporary painting in the attic, they’ll dump her overboard instead of the tea.
Okay — so it’s not funny and mixed allusions to boot — but can you explain why campaign staff do not vet their own candidate at the most basic level? Can’t their kids show them how to use a search engine? Or do they Know All and expect in this age of Tell-All that it will not come out? Or that it won’t come out until after the election, so who cares? This is beyond cynicism and into the realm right through the looking glass and out the other side:
At this rate, the Mad Hatter could run … and win, on a platform of open, honest, unimpugnable Nonsense … oops, I Googled him just for the hell of it, and found he has A Past. Not only is the Mad Hatter under sentence of death for murder, but the endless Tea Party itself was constructed solely to evade the judgement — a totally irrational judgement to begin with, of course. Furthermore, “Mad” isn’t even the name he was born with (not to mention his having been born outside the USA in the first place). And what was that about a fictional member of Congress . . . .?
It’s a fascinating question. To be fair, the Mike Castle Republicans brought out a lot of this stuff against O’Donnell, and Tea Party voters didn’t seem to care. Attack ads appear to have reached the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” stage, now….there have been so many false and over-blown revelations about opposing candidates that voters don’t pay attention to the dirt they need to know. As for the candidate’s organization, etc: we learned that John Edwards’ aids knew that he was a lying, cheating, philandering phony. Obama’s organization knew about his youthful drug use and his associations with some controversial characters….and his almost total lack of actual governing experience. In general, I think the organization makes a calculation regarding whether the flaws outweigh the positives. Obama gives a mean speech. O’Donnell’s cute. Edwards was cute too…
At least it wasn’t an Oxford Round Table discussion she was counting as “studying”. The only thing I could find on the Phoenix Institute isn’t encouraging for something listed as a serious academic activity, though. It looks like a self-help/self-esteem exercise, but longer and with the possibility of transferring credits as a free elective somewhere.
I don’t really understand the Tea Party movement. When it first started, they only talked about fiscal responsibility. Republicans with values but Fiscal Responsibility first.
And I liked the idea of the Tea Party.
Then Palin jumped on board and brought every social conservative and religious conservative and hijacked the Tea Party into a Social Issues First organization. TP went from centrist to the right fringe almost overnight.
And I disliked the idea of the Tea Party.
Now the logical outcome has come to pass. With no leadership and no organization, anyone can call themselves a Tea Party candidate and ride the train without actually being qualified to do so.
I switched to Independent this year. I should have done it when I was 18. But I’m a new dad as of Friday, and I’m going to start my new life the correct way.
She’s CUTE? I am astonished at you.
She is a MORON.
That’s all I have to say.
Except shame on you for allowing this to be part of your dialogue.
But cute is not irrelevant in electoral politics. Palin is cute. John Edwards was cute. being cute and being a moron are not mutually exclusive. If O’Donnell were not cute, I doubt she would have won…because she doesn’t have much else.
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