65.0°,
A Few Clouds Editorial: Yom Kippur for the Republicans
With their grassroots activism, the Tea Party has affected races locally and across the nation. In the Delaware Senate race, instead of an eminently respectable and electable Republican congressman, Mike Castle, a political catastrophe known as Christine O’Donnell, with Palin’s backing, took the nomination.
O’Donnell has more skeletons in her closet than a haunted house. According to her former campaign manager, O’Donnell used her 2008 campaign funds for “rent and personal expenses, while leaving her workers unpaid and piling up thousands in debt,” though she did somehow manage to pay her mother $3,500 for working on her campaign. Among her more interesting personal anecdotes, she once told interviewer Bill Maher that had she been alive during the Holocaust, and had Jews hidden in her home, she would not have lied to the Nazis to protect them.
“You never have to practice deception,” O’Donnell told Maher. “G-d always provides a way out.”
We wonder if G-d will provide a way out of her candidacy.
In a 2007 appearance on the Bill O’Reilly show, O’Donnell demonstrated her scientific expertise by criticizing stem cell treatments, since scientists are “breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.” Apparently, in O’Donnell’s case the process may have been reversed: scientists have accidentally given a political operative the brain of a mouse. Thankfully, borrowing a page from Palin’s playbook, O’Donnell has decided against any more media appearances in the months leading up to the election, which could be the only means to salvage her campaign.
Concerning the New York State governor’s race, in which Republicans put up the dour, not particularly likeable Rick Lazio, now we’ve got Carl Paladino. We’re not exactly sure where to begin with Paladino who, facing Andrew Cuomo, might actually have a shot. Perhaps with the daughter he fathered out of wedlock or the racist, obscene emails Paladino admitted to sending out. When confronted about the emails, Paladino blamed the Democrats.
But at least, to his credit, Paladino sticks by his friends. When Erie County Supervisor Chris Collins referred to Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver, an Orthodox Jew, as “Hitler” and the “Antichrist,” Paladino rose to defend him.
“If I could ever describe a person who would fit the bill of an Antichrist or a Hitler, this guy is it,” Paladino said of the Speaker. Few comparisons could be more disgusting, particularly given that Silver is an Orthodox Jew with family in the Five Towns. Don’t be too concerned, however. Michael Caputo, a spokesman for Paladino, defended Paladino to The New York Jewish Week by explaining that the millionaire businessman has “Jewish friends in Buffalo.”
On Tuesday Paladino was scheduled to appear at a shul in Brooklyn to try and repair some of the damage.
Don’t get us wrong, we like Paladino. He’s quite entertaining and probably a hit at parties and, Heaven knows Albany could use some shaking up. But it’s just that we would prefer to not have a politically incompetent man with bizarre fetishes governing in Albany. Been there, done that.
Paladino is also likely to have a snowball effect on other Republican races. Senator Dean Skelos has refused to condemn or discuss Paladino’s remarks, offering political ammunition to his challenger for his state senate seat, Woodmere resident George Sava. Skelos has condemned hateful rhetoric during a campaign at least once in the last — during a Lawrence school board race several years ago — so one would think he would be eager to state for the record that calling a Jewish politician “Hitler” is unacceptable, but perhaps not.
The Tea Party itself can seem like a re-imagined version of “The Manchurian Candidate” or a particularly sinister episode of “The West Wing.” An operative sneaks into a political party and then attempts to destroy it from the inside by exacerbating the party’s worst traits. That is essentially what the Tea Party is doing to the Republican establishment.
However, the GOP itself planted the seeds of the Tea Party. When Democrats said, “Yes, we can,” Republicans failed to offer any new ideas. “Yes, we can,” became “No, you can’t.” And in the absence of new ideas, the Tea Party, a modern-day version of the Know-Nothing party, has taken the national stage.
With Election Day less than six weeks away, and prospects favorable for a number of Tea Party candidates, it would be a supreme irony if a nail in the coffin of the Republican Party as we know it proves to be not President Barack Obama, but Sarah Palin.
