Frank Rich in the New York Times article Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell hit it on the money. While it is true that the Tea Party was a corporate induced grass roots movement, he does not expose the complicity of the mainstream media including the New York Times in allowing a small movement to gain traction based on implied strength and breath as opposed to what they really were.
An example is the comparative narrative given between yesterday’s One Nation rally of liberals and progressives and Glenn Beck’s rally and other Tea Party rallies. The Tea Party rallies get much more coverage than those from the left side even as the Right tries to present the mainstream media as left leaning.
I hope Frank is underestimating the majority of the middleclass. I am trusting that as we counter the alternate state of reality that the Tea Party puts forth with continuous provable strong challenges over the next 29 days, enough will forget their own prejudices that have left their minds closed to information that is in their best financial interest. After-all we do not all live in Kansas.
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ALL it took was some 30,000 Republican primary voters in a tiny state to turn Christine O’Donnell into the brightest all-American media meteor since Balloon Boy. For embattled liberals, not to mention the axis of Comedy Central, “Saturday Night Live” and Bill Maher, she’s been pure comic gold for weeks: a bottomless trove of baldfaced lies, radical views and sheer wackiness. True, other American politicians have dismissed evolution as a myth. Some may even have denied joining a coven. But history will always remember her for taking a fearless stand against masturbation, the one national pastime with more fans than baseball. Yet those laughing now may not have the last laugh in November. O’Donnell’s timely ascent in the election season’s final lap may well prove a godsend for the G.O.P.
At first some Republicans had trouble figuring this out. On primary eve, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee badmouthed O’Donnell’s “disturbing pattern of dishonest behavior.” On election night, Karl Rove belittled her “nutty” pronouncements and “checkered background” on Fox News. But by the morning after, bygones were bygones. The senatorial committee’s chairman, John Cornyn, rewarded O’Donnell’s “dishonest behavior” with an enthusiastic endorsement and a big check. A sweaty Rove reversed himself so fast you’d think he’d been forced to stay up all night listening to Glenn Beck’s greatest hits at top volume in a Roger Ailes re-education camp.
Rove’s flip-flop was no doubt hastened by his own cohort’s assaults on both his ideological purity and masculinity. The blogger Michelle Malkin labeled him an “effete sore loser,” and Sarah Palin publicly instructed him to “buck up.” But surely the larger motive for his retreat was the dawning recognition of just how valuable O’Donnell is to the G.O.P.’s national aspirations in November — even should she ultimately lose her own race in blue Delaware. Whatever her other talents, she’s more than willing to play the role of useful idiot for her party. She gives populist cover to the billionaires and corporate interests that have been steadily annexing the Tea Party movement and busily plotting to cash in their chips if the G.O.P. prevails.
While O’Donnell’s résumé has proved largely fictional, one crucial biographical plotline is true: She has had trouble finding a job, holding on to a home and paying her taxes. In this, at least, she is like many Americans in the Great Recession, including the angry claque that found its voice in the Tea Party. For a G.O.P. that is even more in thrall to big money than the Democrats, she couldn’t be a more perfect decoy.
By latching on to O’Donnell’s growing presence, the Rove-Boehner-McConnell establishment can claim it represents struggling middle-class Tea Partiers rather than Wall Street potentates and corporate titans. O’Donnell’s value is the same as that other useful idiot, Michael Steele, who remains at the Republican National Committee only because he can wave the banner of “diversity” over a virtually all-white party that alternately demonizes African-Americans, Latinos, gays and Muslims.
Op-Ed Columnist – The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell – NYTimes.com