Under Investigation, Christine O'Donnell Goes Delusional

Tea Party flash in the pan Christine O’Donnell is back, in classic form: under investigation and spouting delusional, self-aggrandizing nonsense.

O’Donnell, the failed GOP Delaware senate nominee, is reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice over allegations that she used campaign funds for personal purposes like paying her rent. (Law enforcement sources told the Washington Post the probe “is very preliminary and has not progressed to a full-fledged criminal investigation.”) [See 2010: The Year in Cartoons.]

This is classic O’Donnell: These sort of allegations have been hanging around her for a while. Also classic is her reaction. Her campaign issued the following statement, emphasis hers:

Since anonymous sources are being taken seriously, please allow me to share some tips I've received and keep the tipsters' identities anonymous. We've been warned by multiple high-ranking Democrat insiders that the Delaware Democrat and Republican political establishment is jointly planning to pull out all the stops to ensure I would never again upset the apple cart. Specifically they told me the plan was to crush me with investigations, lawsuits and false accusations so that my political reputation would become so toxic no one would ever get behind me. I was warned by numerous sources that the DE political establishment is going to use every resource available to them. So given that the King of the Delaware Political Establishment just so happens to be the Vice President of the most liberal Presidential administration in U.S. history, it is no surprise that misuse and abuse of the FBI would not be off the table. And further connecting the dots, do you think it is just a coincidence that Melanie Sloan was a senior Biden staffer just before she joined CREW and filed her complaint against me?!

The marvelous self-delusion of this statement is breathtaking. Even if you accept her absurd view of the Obama administration--that the president is a sort of liberal, Nixonian figure turning the full force of the U.S. government against his political enemies on the right—her theory still doesn’t make sense. O’Donnell lost her Senate race in a smashing landslide, 57-40. No one need crush her with investigations because Delaware voters already crushed her with ballots. To what end would anyone in the Democratic Party plot against her? To try to stop her from sabotaging another Delaware Republican campaign? [Read Susan Milligan: Christine O'Donnell is no Sarah Palin]

She is in short a political novelty … who thinks the vice president doesn't have anything better to do than direct a massive federal persecution against her.

I guess if you’re going to be nutty, you might as well aim high.

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