More O'Donnell

I swear that I am not obsessed with the primary victory of Republican Christine O’Donnell. Nonetheless she seems so emblematic of what is wrong with the tea party faction of the Republican Party. And one of the major problems with the other factions is that they feed the tea party faction.

Here are two quotes from O’Donnell:

I think that drug use is out of control here and there is something called tough love and what has happened with the liberal welfare program implemented in the last decade is they have cultivated an attitude of dependency. The reality is, especially in my own city here in D.C., is that a lot of those people who do deal drugs are using federal money that they get from welfare programs. We need to implement a tough love program.

We know that people will abuse the system. They will find a recovery program that can enable them to continue in their drug use as long as they get federal funding. We see the same kind of abuse with food stamps... people are abusing our compassion.

So my problem with these statements is their lack of intellectual rigor. What is the basis for her statement that “a lot of those who deal drugs are using federal money?” She states this as fact, but provides no supporting info. Perhaps it is supposed to be implicit because both of these groups tend to live in the same neighborhoods. This too is a misnomer too, but I can only cover so much in one posting. Would her “tough love” program allow the children of America to become like the children of third-world countries? That is, would America’s poorest children be starving on the street and condemned to caste system where education and upward mobility become even further out of reach?

She also implies that the fact that some people abuse a system means that the system should be abolished. So I could say the same thing about voting, so should we abolish this too?

She goes on to say:

We sit there and scratch our heads and wonder why sexual harassment is out of control in this country. It is because we are setting a precedent through our pop culture, through the songs that penetrate the airwaves and the sitcoms that are on television that are just saturated with sexual themes, that respect no boundaries. We need to just do a U-Haul of our pop culture. I think legislators, Hollywood film producers all need to reevaluate why they are doing what they are doing... We end up feeding a demon, feeding a monster and we are feeding this appetite so much that our generation is going to self-destruct quite honestly.

So here she conflates a legislative agenda with a cultural one. She suggests that politicians should do a ‘U-Haul’ (seriously… U-Haul?) of our pop-culture. I have no idea what the hell she means by this and doubt that she’s thought about it enough to know herself. I can’t think of any steps that politicians could take short of legislating pop culture that would help in this area. The only countries that I can think of that currently attempt this are totalitarian regimes such as Iran where they now have a list of acceptable haircut styles.

Half of me is giddy with delight at her nomination given that she has a snowball’s chance in hell at election in a state such as Delaware. However, a more insidious part of me asks… “what if…” and this part terrifies me. I just cannot help imagining an army of people like O’Donnell, who believe that (a) masturbation is evil, (b) morality can and should be legislated being in control of this country.