Who's the Witch?

Christine O'Donnell's victory in Delaware sent shockwaves through the clubby heights of the Republican establishment, but it's sent the left into an absolute conniption fit.  Nobody expected this; the defeat of longtime incumbent Mike Castle by an unknown in his own party primary was not supposed to be possible.  Yet it happened.

When people get surprised they sometimes act on instinct, and in doing so reveal truths about themselves that they wouldn't have done if they'd had a chance to think things through beforehand.  So it is with the Left as it throws everything plus the kitchen sink at Ms. O'Donnell.

All the usual best hits from their playbook are there: accusations of religious extremism, opposition to "women's rights" and free love, complaints that she's not as rich as they are and has had financial problems in the past, checking decades of documents to find uncrossed T's and undotted I's.  Along with the usual bumf, however, we find this odd little item:

This may be a first in U.S. Senate politics: The issue of witchcraft has taken center stage.

Christine O'Donnell, the Republican nominee seeking Delaware's open Senate seat, said on Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" in 1999: "I dabbled into witchcraft. I never joined a coven." Maher aired the old footage on his show last week.  "One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's a little blood there and stuff like that," she said.

It has, perhaps, been some years since first dates were customarily restrained to hamburgers and a movie, yet to our conservative minds this does sound a bit off-putting.  A little blood here and there, no big deal, whatever, eh?  The only blood we want to see whilst on a date is dripping from our medium-rare steak.

Key words: to our conservative minds.  The left is attacking Ms. O'Donnell with a charge that might, they suppose, lose her points in the minds of conservatives - but the accusation is something that the left themselves cares about not one whit.

Since when has the left been offended by witches?  They howled when the Army sacked a chaplain who wanted to convert to Wicca.  Wiccan witchcraft has long been associated with feminism; the lesbian "Women's Studies" professor who goes to coven bonfires on the weekend is almost a stereotype.

If Ms. O'Donnell were running on the Democratic ticket, Bill Maher would be first in line to decry any criticism based on her free exercise of First Amendment rights to freedom of religion.  Because she's now a conservative, though, we're supposed to burn the (ex-)witch?

It reminds us just a bit of the late lamented career of Sen. Larry Craig, he of wide-stance fame.  The world will never know whether Sen. Craig was, truly, a homosexual, or whether he, truly, was seeking some mid-trip debauchery in that Minneapolis airport restroom.  Regardless, the Left wanted people to think he was and condemn him accordingly.

What of Sen. Barney Frank, who lived with a homosexual prostitute who was running a male prostitution ring out of Mr. Frank's own house and has been an open homosexual for decades?  Larry Craig did nothing that Frank didn't do with men, or Ted Kennedy with women.  Yet Craig was condemned by the Democrats and their liberal media allies where Frank and Kennedy were lionized.

The difference, of course, lies purely in the letter after their names, or more specifically in the tilt of their politics.  Swing left, and you can commit any crime and expect the powerful to cover for you.  Swing right, and the slightest whiff of anything odd will be trumpeted as the second coming of Ted Bundy.

By condemning O'Donnell for actions that they themselves support and defend, simply because they believe her supporters will find their charges to be distasteful, the Left once again stands revealed as the hypocrites all America is realizing they are.

What's more, they clearly display O'Donnell's true qualification for the Senate seat: if the best you can come up with is to accuse her of being a witch decades ago, she must be a pretty decent person, especially when compared to the tax cheats and thieves in Mr. Obama's Cabinet and in our Congress.

This reprehensible ploy will only work if we let it.  Forget the silly concerns over a college student's childish rebellions.  Concentrate on getting rid of the real witches who are magicking away our money, our future, our freedoms, and our very nation.