Christine O’Donnell’s Career, RIP

odonnell2-7484561.jpgChristine O’Donnell’s campaign went off the rails today when Bill Maher announced that he has previously-unseen clips of O’Donnell from the late 1990s when she appeared several times on his show. In one clip, she says that she once “dabbled into witchcraft.”

I dabbled into witchcraft — I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. … I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. […]
One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. … We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.

Good grief. Maher says there is a lot more where that came from. Not coincidentally, I’m sure, O’Donnell’s staff today canceled her scheduled appearances on Fox News Sunday and Face the Nation tomorrow. It seems apparent that O’Donnell was not properly vetted as a candidate and that she will be more the butt of jokes for the next six weeks than a serious candidate. This is not what the conservative movement needs.
UPDATE: A reader adds:

Yes, anything that revives Bill Maher’s noxious career is bad for Republicans, conservatives, and frankly the whole country.
Maher is no Jon Stewart. As much as I might disagree with Stewart’s conventional Long Island liberalism, you cannot deny he is funny, humane, and modestly fair.
Maher, on the other hand, is pure caustic spite with no talent and a bevy of very creepy demons of his own.

That may be too generous toward Stewart, but it is certainly true as to Maher.
SCOTT adds: Michelle Malkin provides another take.
JOHN adds: This is what Michelle says:

At 1:03 in the video, one of the panelists on the show criticizes O’Donnell for criticizing Halloween — “Wait a minute, I love this, you’re a witch, you go ‘Halloween is bad,’ I’m not the witch, I mean wait a minute.” She responds by explaining that she opposes it because she has had first-hand experience with what they do.
So, she tried it. She rejected it. And she learned from it.
Somehow, this Maher-edited clip (which was never aired on TV, by the way) warrants a declaration from my friend John Hinderaker at Power Line that O’Donnell’s career is “RIP.”
Nonsense. She has nothing to be ashamed of — except, perhaps, for going on Maher’s show so many times. He promises to release 22 more clips until she sits down with him in front of the cameras and brags, in typical TV chauvinist fashion, that he “created her” and that she “owe[s]” him.
Ignore the Hollywood attention troll. Focus on the campaign, the voters of Delaware, and the bearded Marxist opponent who’s the real out-of-touch extremist in the race.

Lest there be any doubt, if I were a resident of Delaware, I would vote for O’Donnell. That is because she is far preferable to her “bearded Marxist” opponent. But O’Donnell is, nevertheless, a lousy candidate. I’m sorry, but politics is not about snatching random people out of the crowd and making them one of 100 United States Senators. Those who seek high office need to be qualified as leaders. They must be thoughtful and intelligent; they must have accomplishments in the public, or, better yet, the private sphere.
Christine O’Donnell has none of the above qualities. If the best we can say about her is that her “dabbling in witchcraft” is excusable, I rest my case. She will be a laughingstock for the next six weeks, I fear, and then will be clobbered in the general election. Whether this is better or worse than having Mike Castle as a Senator is a legitimately debatable point. But I don’t see how any conservative can deny that it would be better if the Republican Party had nominated a stronger and more qualified conservative to represent Delaware in the Senate.
PAUL adds: It’s great to hear that O’Donnell learned from her experiences dabbling in witchcraft. You wouldn’t want a U.S. Senator who dabbled in witchcraft and learned nothing from it.

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