Wednesday, October 6, 2010

She Gets Better All the Time

Via James Fallows, the latest gem from the Christine O'Donnell files. This is from a primary debate among the candidates for the Republican senate nomination in 2006:
She [O'Donnell] said China had a "carefully thought out and strategic plan to take over America" and accused one opponent of appeasement for suggesting that the two countries were economically dependent and should find a way to be allies.

"That doesn't work," she said. "There's much I want to say. I wish I wasn't privy to some of the classified information that I am privy to."

"A country that forces women to have abortions and mandates that you can only have one child and will not allow you the freedom to read the Bible, you think they can be our friend?" she asked. "We have to look at our history and realize that if they pretend to be our friend it's because they've got something up their sleeve."

And the man she was criticizing, and who ultimately won the primary, was Chinese American law professor Jan Ting.

Fallows:

It's not the concern about takeover that's so far-fetched. Who knows how the world will look in 50 years. It is the "privy to classified information" riff that, to anyone who knows anything about the world of politics, instantly signals, "I am completely insane."

"Dabbling" in witchcraft, mice with human brains -- yeah yeah, I don't care. But the idea (a) that there would be a secret document laying it all out, (b) that it would have come into her hands, and (c) that her confidentiality oaths would bind her to protect it -- all this instantly connects her with the vast reserve armies of conspiratorialist lunatics that anyone in any branch of public life encounters over the years. I'm never sure which is worse: the person who says, "If you will just spend six hours with me on the phone discussing my single-space document with handwritten marginalia, you will finally understand the true conspiracy!" Or, the person who says, "I wish I could show you the single-space document that contains the final proof, but They would come to get me if I said another word." It's a close call.

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