Tea Partier Christine O'Donnell shocked the American political landscape when she won last week's primary election for the Republican nomination for the United States senate in Delaware.
A media firestorm has since erupted as people unfamiliar with O'Donnell have started to dig into her past.
Here are some of the interesting quotations that have surfaced since then:
[in a 1997 interview with Bill O'Reilly]:
"They are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they're already into this experiment."
[in a 1999 appearance on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher]:
"I dabbled into witchcraft – I never joined a coven. But… I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up… One of my first dates with a witch was on a Satanic altar and I didn't know it. I mean, there's a little blood there and stuff like that… We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a Satanic altar."
[in a 2003 Washington Times article]:
"What's next? Orgy rooms? Menage a trois rooms? ... [Coedness] is like a radical agenda forced on college students."
[in a 2006 Wilmington News Journal article]:
"People are created in God's image. Homosexuality is an identity adopted through societal factors. It's an identity disorder."
Additionally, O'Donnell has questioned whether women belong in the military and likened masturbation to adultery. She has been accused of embezzling campaign funds to pay personal expenses in the past and she received her bachelor's degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University just this year despite numerous claims in the past that she already had it.
The editorial board at The Spectrum, composed of editors from different political ideologies, finds it worrying that O'Donnell managed to win the primary.
The fact that she defeated Mike Castle, a moderate Republican who was heavily favored and endorsed by the GOP, shows how the Tea Party has endorsed candidates who use social issues, religion, and fear-driven tactics to will voters to the polls.
The Tea Party began as a movement concerned with fiscal policy. Hopefully, it will be policy, not fear-mongering and social posturing, that inspires citizens to vote on Election Day.
In O'Donnell's case, she needs to show the voters that she is qualified to lead after so much evidence points to the contrary.
