A Critical Essay on Christine O’Donnell’s Speech for the Values Voters Summit

Christine ODonnell
The biggest showstopper power phrase of Christine O’Donnell’s speech at the Values Voters Summit on Friday, was: we’re not trying to take back our country, we are our country. Isn’t this a contradition to her idea that the Obama Administration is the ‘Ruling Elite?’ Isn’t she really saying we (The Tea Party) are the ‘Ruling Elite?’

The problem I am having is with one of the metaphors Christine uses so readily, the “constitutional covenant,” is that she seems to mix the faith of the Hebrews, symbolized in the Ark of the Covenant, with the basic text (The Constitution) that contains the guidelines for our Democracy. The point which needs to be emphasized here, is that the American Forefathers made a strong point to separate religion from statecraft, based on the Enlightenment thinking of men such as John Locke or Jean Jacques Rousseau.

This bunch of rowdy (ratty), loud and passionate shadows of the American Revolution, touted by Christine O’Donnell, do not in any way resemble the early patriots who rebelled against England. Thomas Paine, often considered a founding father of the U.S., and the author of Common Sense, a pamphlet that charged the Colonists with revolutionary fervor, was vehemently opposed to organized religion, while O’Donnell flagrantly prefers to inject religious issues (social issues) into politics.

Christine, you may want to pull out those musty, moth-balled American History textbooks, and review what our early radical patriots really stood for. They knew that if they didn’t eliminate religion from the public statecraft, they would fall back into the trap of European monarchies, and the fallacious notion of ‘Divine Right,’ that gave Kings an unchecked weapon of tyranny to dominate and oppress their respective peoples. This is just what our brave patriots were trying so hard to prevent.

Early in your speech on Friday, you ranted about how the Obama Administration, in its early days, indulged in a “Keynesian fantasy” with their bailouts and ObamaCare. Did you forget, Christine, that our nation was on the verge of a complete financial collapse the size of The Great Depression of the 1930s? Did you also forget that it was the Bush Administration that initiated these bailouts? We almost lost it, Christine, we had no choice but to pull John Keynes out of the rabbit’s hat!

No more Ford or GM. We had a liquidity problem at that time. Banks wouldn’t loan money to large corporations, so the government had to do it for them. Had we failed to do this, Christine, the entire U.S. system would have folded like a flaky deck of Old Maid cards. But now Ford and GM are coming back to life. Obama saved these behemoth relics from a premature burial in a scrap-metal graveyard. So yes, CO, Obama used the ideas of John Maynard Keynes effectively, just as FDR did in the 1930s.

Oh yea, then there was the jab about “withdrawal dates” in Iraq and Afghanistan, as if this was a bad thing. I don’t know about you, but I am thankful that combat operations are finally over with in Iraq. Isn’t it a miracle that we have decreased our military presence in Iraq and that deadlines are in place for withdrawal from Afghanistan? Just this morning more bombings were reported in Baghdad. It won’t ever stop, and why should we be in the middle of that big mess? Christine wants “peace through strength,” which is a code phrase for protracted warfare for as far as the eye can see into our future.

Let me ‘Get Back’ to Christine’s speech. Her talk was so congested with ‘power phrases’ and platitudes, that it was virtually impossible to tell just exactly what she was saying. Her delivery itself was smooth as silk, and trumped any squawk-talk that Sarah Palin could ever gift us with. This might be a problem, as Sarah Barracuda gets sidelined as a second-string cheerleader for the sacred creeds of the Teabaggers. A short list of these power phrases are: “ruling class elite,” the “audacity of liberty” and the “revolution of reason.”

I don’t believe that any of these ‘pretty word play mottos’ contain any real identifiable substance. The first one, “ruling class elite” is nicely addressed in Glenn Greenwald’s Salon piece, The Misguided reaction to Tea Party candidates. Basically, O’Donnell represents a new rogue faction within the larger Republican party, that is lower middle class, than say, the Rove and Bushes of the world. Therefore, how could someone such as Christine enter this ‘Closed Club’ of elites? That’s right, my friend, she can’t!

Anyway, you try to figure out what she means by the “ruling class elite”? I guess this refers to all the people in Obama’s administration, which fortunately are intelligent and well educated. Many of these Washington bureaucrats have masters’ degrees and even PHDs. This would have to be a good thing, put to use to formulate and implement effective public policy. I wonder just how much Christine learned at Farleigh Dickinson? And did she dabble in witchcraft a tidbit while shaping her future lofty theories on sexual abstinence and masturbation?

Most baffling of all, was about halfway through her speech she had a little epiphany on the Reagan Era (1980-1988), that practically made me boo-hoo in prodigious pools of tears and flapdoodle. Yea, those were the days when the Golden Arches hit Moscow and small mom and pop businesses, like Wal-Mart and Home Depot blossomed on the American landscape with all kinds of stuff, like “peace and prosperity,” the “audacity of liberty” and the “shining city on the hill of freedom.”

I don’t have enough time now to drift off on all these syrupy platitudes, but since when was Wal-Mart a good example of the American Dream? All they do is kill competition, oppress their workers, snuff out mom and pop local businesses, and buy from China, not from American manufacturers. Maybe, you should consider boycotting Wal-Mart if you’re such a stalwart champion of ‘we the people?’ And junk food (Golden Arches) in Moscow-how is that such a big accomplishment?

Too many things to cover here, too many silverfish and bedbugs spilling out of Miss O’Donnell’s mouth. The last one I’ll mention is she claims her crowd is returning to the Federalist Papers and to the Constitution. That’s a laugh! Can you name one person in your patriotic retinue who has read or studied the Federalist Papers? I doubt it. The purpose of the Federalist Papers was to strengthen the central government. You better not study these documents, Christine, you need to grab on to the Articles of Confederation, an earlier ‘covenant’ that emphasized States Rights. This is your bible.

In her last blast of clarion liberty, O’Donnell channels the vision of the “first generation of dissenters” who could only see Lexington, and wouldn’t live to see future beacons of freedom, such as Gettysburg, Normandy and Fallusha. But now her group will carry the torch of the patriotic past forward, ‘the last best hope of every American, to pledge their lives and sacred honor’ to kick the butts of the Democrats out of office. Watch out ‘cuz here they (The Tea Party) come, dressed in red, white, and blue and gurgling Yankee Doodle Dandy, while munching on a heart-disease-laden-Big Mac burger.

Christine O’Donnell’s Awesome Speech at the Values Voters Summit

http://www.palinpromotions.com/blog/2010/09/18/christine-odonnells-awesome-speech-at-the-values-voters-summit/