Christine O'Donnell Could Actually Win Delaware Race: Polls (Decision 2010)

Poll Shows Surge For O'Donnell In Delaware


A surprising new Senate poll in Delaware shows Republican Christine O'Donnell may be in striking distance of Democrat Chris Coons.

According to the new survey from Monmouth University, the surprise Republican nominee is only 10 points behind Coons, drawing 41 percent of the vote. In a previous Monmouth poll conducted two weeks ago, O'Donnell trailed by 19 points.

But the latest Monmouth survey differs substantially from two other recent polls, including a Farleigh Dickinson survey released Thursday that showed a 21-point advantage for Coons and a CNN/Time poll released earlier this month that indicated a 19-point lead for Coons.

The latest Monmouth poll surveyed 1,171 voters between October 25-27 and carries a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Check out the latest polls in the CNN Polling Center


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Sources: CNN, Fox News, Youtube, Google Maps

Christine O'Donnell vs. Gawker: Tea Party Strikes Back!

Gawker Risks Tea Party Fury Over Christine O'Donnell "Kiss & Tell"


As an upstart Manhattan-based gossip site with a reputation for iconoclasm and baiting celebrities, Gawker.com has always been clear in its priorities: attract traffic, make money, don't fret too much about upsetting your subjects.

But the agent provocateur of the New York media scene appeared to have crossed one line too many, after it published a prurient "Kiss and Tell" about the Republican senatorial candidate and Tea Party darling Christine O'Donnell.

O'Donnell has faced embarrassing revelations before in her campaign to be elected senator for Delaware in next Tuesday's US midterms – most notoriously, she was revealed to have dabbled in witchcraft as a young woman, forcing her to issue a TV ad that opens: "I am not a witch ...". She admitted campaigning against masturbation during the 1990s and her knowledge of the US constitution was embarrassingly exposed during a campaign meeting.

Gawker's revelation that she had spent a drunken night with an unnamed man three years ago, however – detailing in the most ungentlemanly of terms her appearance "when her underwear came off" – appeared to have achieved the most unlikely feat of her campaign so far: sparking indignation among the mainstream media and winning her defenders from the left as well as the right.

"Gawker Hits O'Donnell While She's Down", read a blog at TheAtlantic.com (O'Donnell is 21 points behind her Democrat rival in the senatorial race), while Walter Shapiro at PoliticsDaily.com wrote: "What Gawker has achieved is something that I never thought possible. It made me feel sorry for Christine O'Donnell."

"I hate to be the person to defend her, but as feminists we have to defend all women from this nonsense, even women who are antifeminist," Jessica Valenti, the founder of feministing.com, told the Guardian.

Even the National Organisation for Women, the largest feminist organisation in the US, hit out at the "slut-shaming" approach of the article. "NOW repudiates Gawker's decision to run this piece," said NOW's president Terry O'Neill. "It operates as public sexual harassment. And like all sexual harassment, it targets not only O'Donnell, but all women contemplating stepping into the public sphere."

The piece, entitled I Had a One Night Stand with Christine O'Donnell, was published on the site on Thursday, and concerned the events of an evening three years ago, when the author claimed O'Donnell, an acquaintance, had turned up at his home in Philadelphia and asked if she could change into her Halloween outfit – a ladybird. After persuading the unnamed author and his flatmate to accompany her for drinks, O'Donnell had reportedly stayed the night in the man's bed, though they had not had sex. (The man has since, perhaps inevitably, been named by a number of websites).

From Gawker's point of view, this story was not unusual — three weeks ago, it published an article about Democrat congressional candidate Krystal Ball entitled 9 Pictures of a Politician Sucking a Dildo Attached to a Man's Nose. The O'Donnell piece, accordingly, seems to have caused Nick Denton, Gawker Media's British founder, little concern. In a memo to staff on Thursday, he congratulated them on "an example of brilliant packaging".

Remy Stern, the site's editor, told the Guardian: "It was a compelling story and we stand by it. It speaks to a certain hypocrisy given her views on sexuality."

But for some of those close to the organisation, there was no question that Gawker's "anything goes" culture of mischief-making had finally gone too far. "It definitely feels off," said Chiore Sicha, a former editor of the site who now co-edits TheAwl.com. "This is Gawker not quite getting its mission right. I have talked to Nick about it."

By publishing a story by "some enormous schmoe" in which O'Donnell had not behaved particularly embarrassingly – "for most people this is just your average Halloween" – the site had badly misjudged its audience, said Sicha. But as for the site's founder: "Nick is never one to worry about what people are saying. He doesn't really care."

Other media watchers agree that Denton, who pays his staff partly based on the traffic their stories generate, will lose no sleep over the media brouhaha.

"Nick has a travelling carnival moving at high speed, and he will be delighted by this," said Jack Shafer, the respected media columnist at Slate.com. Neither the kiss and tell form nor the prurience of the story was particularly new, he said, even in American political discourse. "It's the volume at which Nick Denton is playing this story that is new." Denton's talent, he said, was as a "shape-shifter", appealing to journalistic mores when it suited him, side-stepping its ethics when it did not.

And the giddy ringmaster certainly appears to have achieved his aim. By last night a story titled Katy Perry Shoots More Stuff Out of Her Boobs, also posted on Thursday, had garnered 10,660 page views. The O'Donnell kiss and tell was ranking at 720,680. And, as Shafer noted: "Everyone who complained about it has read to the end."


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Sources: Gawker.com, Guardian.co,uk, Youtube, Google Maps

Christine O'Donnell's First Campaign Ad: "I'm You"

Tea Party Darling Christine O'Donnell In First Ad: "I'm Not A Witch"


Tea Party darling Christine O'Donnell may be brewing more ridicule for her fledgling Senate campaign after releasing her first TV ad.

"I'm not a witch," O'Donnell deadpans into the camera at the start of the 30-second ad released Monday.

Christian conservative O'Donnell, however, could use a magic spell to help close the near double-digit gap in the polls she faces against her opponent, Democrat Chris Coons, in the Delaware contest.

"I'm nothing you've heard. I'm you," the GOP nominee says in the ad. O'Donnell goes on to slam the Washington establishment for "trading favors" and "backroom deals."

"I'll go to Washington and do what you'd do," she says.

O'Donnell's ad puts her in the hallowed hall of political denials, which include President Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook," and President Bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

The witch controversy stems from comedian Bill Maher, who has been releasing embarrassing clips of the wannabe senator from his 1990s show "Politically Incorrect" since her primary win last month, including one where she admits she dabbled in witchcraft.

"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," O'Donnell said. "We went to a movie and then had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar."

Other clips show O'Donnell referring to evolution as a myth and saying her love of meatballs kept her from becoming a Hare Krishna.


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Sources: NY Daily News, Youtube, Google Maps

"Mama Grizzlies" Break Political Glass Ceiling: GOP's Secret Weapons

Sarah Palin The Pack Leader As "Mama Grizzlies" Roam US Political Landscape

It's cubbing season in the United States and all over the country mother grizzly bears are on the attack, tearing their foes limb from limb and gorging on the carcasses. It's a bloody business, American politics.

The concept of the "mama grizzlies" was first introduced into the political debate in 2008 by vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin as one of her homely campaign trail mantras – alongside "hockey moms" and "First Dude".

Since May this year she has been using it nonstop. She seems almost ready to launch the Mama Grizzly party.

"Here in Alaska I always think of the mama grizzly bears that rise up on their hind legs when somebody's coming to attack their cubs," she said at one conservative rally.

"You thought pitbulls were tough, well you don't want to mess with the mama grizzlies."

When she first started projecting the metaphor, critics within both the Democratic and Republican parties ridiculed it as just another marketing gimmick to disguise Palin's lack of policy substance.

But the curious thing is, the more she deploys the expression the more it appears to be coming true.

Across the US a growing number of female politicians have indeed broken through the glass ceiling of local obscurity to become nationally recognised figures.

Many are on the right or members of the Tea Party eruption to which Palin has attached herself.

In part the phenomenon can be seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Palin used her star power to back mama grizzlies, helping them to come into existence.

Nikki Haley, the Republican nomination for governor in South Carolina; Carly Fiorina, the anti-abortion former Hewlett-Packard boss standing for the Senate in California; Sharron Angle taking on Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, in Nevada; and the volatile Christine O'Donnell in Delaware all bear the Palin mama grizzly stamp.



Having coined the expression, Palin helped make it real. But that only goes so far as an explanation. For Palin not only helped make the trend happen, she has also ridden on the back of it.

Recent polls suggest that more than half the followers of the Tea Parties are female.

Several of the most important Tea Party leaders, who have risen from nowhere to become significant names on the national stage, are women.

These include Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots and Amy Kremer who is chairman – her title – of the Tea Party Express.

Palin cleverly spotted that times were changing. Conservative American women are no longer satisfied with organising cake sales and potlucks.

They are starting to feel their own power, and they are in for the kill.


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Sources: CBS News, Guardian.co.uk, Huffington Post, Politico, Youtube, Google Maps

Christine O'Donnell Mocked On Saturday Night Live: "Cold Open"

SNL Returns With Christine O’Donnell Masturbation Parody


Saturday Night Live returned tonight and from the multitude of topics they had to choose from (and really, the news cycle is an embarrassment of riches where SNL is concerned) they opted for Christine O’Donnell.

In the open O’Donnell, played by Kristen Wiig, is asked about her past transgressions by members of the RNC (Jason Sudeikis and Bill Hader) who want to make sure there will be no more media surprises before they agree to fund her (it is perhaps a measure of the nation’s political savvy that SNL assumed viewers would know about her troubles with the RNC).

Suffice to say SNL is not afraid to play dirty.

After discussing the “media’s fixation” with silly things like “dabbling in witchcraft” O’Donnell reveals to the pair that back when she started her anti-masturbation campaign back in the day she didn’t even know what masturbation was…now that she does she "Masturbates" multiple times a day!

Later she assures them that there are no other skeletons in her closet…unless you count the dogs. Turns out O’Donnell used to run dog fights and they were “much better than Michael Vick’s.” And come to think of it there was also this time in college…But never fear! The people of Delaware only want to hear about restoring the Constitution and “things like that.” Indeed.


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Sources: ABC, NBC, Huffington Post, Mediaite.com New York Daily News, Politically Incorrect, Saturday Night Live, TPM-TV, Youtube, Google Maps