Oh Man...

Look, I hate to be the bearer of unfortunate truths but...

It is what it is.

O'Donnell tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that while she does pay rent on what is technically her legal residence with campaign funds, she also has a separate permanent residence, the location of which she won't disclose "for security reasons." O'Donnell said that her campaign office and home were vandalized in 2008, and she's fearful that her opponents will do the same this year. Says O'Donnell:

They’re following me. They follow me home at night. I make sure that I come back to the townhouse and then we have our team come out and check all the bushes and check all the cars to make sure that—they follow me.

That’s what’s disgusting, as you can see from the YouTube videos. They knock on the door at all hours of the night. They’re hiding in the bushes when I’m at candidate forums. In 2008 they broke into my home. They vandalized my home. They wrote nasty notes on my front door, on my front porch. They jeopardized my safety. They did the same thing to our campaign office. They broke into our campaign office. They vandalized our campaign office. They stole files. My campaign signs that had my picture—they put a spear in my mouth poked out my eyes, and cut out the part of my heart, and wrote nasty names all over those campaign signs.

I would be a fool to be pressured into disclosing where I live, when I know that the stakes are even higher this time. What makes me think they wont do the same distasteful things they did in 2008 when the stakes are even higher, when we’re even more viable. I mean come on, John, you’re a class act. You don’t want to—you know that this is a security issue. You know what they’re capable of.

Is O'Donnell suggesting that Castle supporters vandalized her office in 2008, when she was running for Senate against Joe Biden? “I’m not sure who did it, but I know for a fact that Mike Castle and [Delaware GOP chairman] Tom Ross were campaigning against me,” O’Donnell says. “They’ve been sabotaging my candidacy since 2008. So who knows who did it back then.” O'Donnell says there are no police reports of the 2008 break-in because she didn't want to make an issue of it at the time. She claims to have pictures of vandalized signs.

She also won't rule out a third party spoiler bid, should she lose.

More about this candidacy at Townhall. Mark Levin continues supporting her... but only because he hates the living guts of Mike Castle. Which, yeah, I get it.

But.

But.

Jim Geraghty links this "trainwreck" interview, which I don't think is really a trainwreck.

The problem is the interviewer is so antagonistic it comes off as an ambush, which makes her seem sympathetic. A lot of it is quibbling over her self-puffery about "winning two counties" (out of three) in Delaware in 2008. (She didn't, and didn't even come close in one of them.) But, whatever, insurgent candidate, sometimes you have to bend the truth, maybe.

To be fair, she also says she had nothing at all to do with that Liberty.com gay-affair thing, and disavows it, saying "Take the high road."

That's perfectly possible. When you're a little itty-bitty candidate you can't be too choosy about who will work for you, since no one wants to. You might have to settle for the bottom-feeders.

Still, all that, sure, sure, the system is pounding an underdog upstart, yeah, but... there's this following business.

I'm sure this all appears very unseemly to O'Donnell's supporters. The establishment media all ganging up on this upstart to aid a RINO.

I know it looks ugly.

All I can say is... Well, either she was followed and vandalized and all that in 2008 by Mike Castle (who wasn't even running against her; and her own bid was a forlorn-hope give-up by the party) or she wasn't.

It's kind of one or the other.

One thing, though, is that there are "campaign trackers" who go around with videocameras taping candidates as often as possible. To catch them in a "Macacca" moment. So it's not at all kooky to suppose she is being taped in public, frequently, by Mike Castle's people.

In fact, that's surely happening.

But... it's also sort of SOP at this point. It's not something to get all weird about. It sucks, yeah, but this is how the game is played. Everyone's taping everyone, hoping for that golden gaffe.

To defend her a little more, too: I'm told that in that video where her body-people get in the faces of tapers -- yeah, those guys are probably Castle campaign trackers.

So, in that case, it's really not a thug jumping ugly with an average citizen. It's one political pro getting in the face of another political pro. Kind of like a papparazzi knocking over a person to get a picture -- if that person is an ordinary citizen, we say it's bad. If the person knocked over, though, is just another papparazzi, we say, who cares. It's how they play their dirty game.

But, still. Altogether: I just don't find this candidacy credible.

posted by Ace at 03:58 PM

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