The Lady is no Tramp

She’s no Joan of Arc, brazenly presenting herself before her King and informing him she’d been sent by Divine authority to save his throne, but in presenting herself before Delaware’s voters, Christine O’Donnell has shown herself to be made of the same courageous stuff as the Maid of Orleans.

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And like St. Joan, she’s being burned at the stake, but unlike St. Joan, before she can wage all-out war against her nation’s domestic and foreign foes. In a state with about 182,000 Republicans she managed to win the GOP Senatorial primary by 3,000 votes out a total of 55,000 votes cast over the candidate carrying the blessings of his party’s elite and the media, an unforgivable offense punishable by near banishment from the party whose voters handed her a victory and thereby earned her the enmity of a scorned media. No novice in the in the election game, Miss O’Donnell has made futile efforts in the past to gain high office, but that fact has not deterred her from having another go at it, this time for a seat in the United States Senate. And she’s just one election away from possibly winning it in a contest that could decide which party controls the Upper Body on the Hill. That further enrages her party’s elite and the media, both local and national, which have unleashed their attack dogs on her with great enthusiasm. She has dared to challenge the powers-that-be and she must be taught a lesson. On the face of it, she’s a tempting target, especially for those allegedly unbiased journalists who view any candidate slightly to the right of center as a dire threat to democracy and all else that’s holy in their jaded eyes. Take, for example, the charge leveled against her that she has condemned self-abuse – recently described by one columnist as being nothing less than a national pastime in which one must therefore assume he is a regular and enthusiastic participant. The fact that masturbation is deemed a mortal sin by the Roman Catholic Church is never mentioned by the media, which portrays her stand as an individual and farcical opinion by some kind of moralistic fanatic, and not as one required by her faith. We Catholics are not free to pick and choose among the dos and don’ts – they are inscribed in 2000-year-old granite. We are comforted by the understanding that while living Catholic may be hard, dying Catholic is easy. At least as this 84-year-old Roman Catholic sees it. Miss O’Donnell must be aware that openly championing the doctrines of her faith must inevitably provoke the latent anti-Catholicism of the media’s elite. And that by provoking it she leaves herself open to the kind of savage attack we are now witnessing. Were she a practicing Muslim, or a devout Jew she would be immune from attacks on her loyalty to her religious beliefs – which includes opposition to so-called same sex-marriage - an oxymoron. Until recently, marriage always implied a state-sanctioned arrangement between a man and a woman. Catholics are not so immune from such attacks, unless of course, their name happens to be Kennedy. You don’t have to be a sagacious observer of all things political to recognize the sleazy attacks on the lady as a recognition by the chattering class that the by electing Christine O’Donnell to the U.S. Senate the voters of Delaware would be adding a strong and persuasive voice to the cause of traditional conservatism. And might change the balance of power in a city where power is everything. That scares the living hell out of them. And unleashes it on their target. If I were living in Delaware she’d get my vote.