You have to admire the pluck of Christine O'Donnell If nothing else, the girl has spunk. Most people would just wilt under the withering criticism that gets directed at her but she just picks herself up and keeps right on going. Sort of the Energizer Bunny of politics, or infotainment personality or whatever hell category she fits into.
Take this week: Though she's been on all the major cable news networks (CNN, O'Reilly, etc), morning shows, national radio and the like promoting her fictional account of last year's Senate race in Delaware she's managed to sell only 2000 copies so far of her opus, Troublemaker. A recent book signing in conservative bastion Naples, Florida had only five people bother to attend.
O’Donnell took the turnout of five people — members of the media outnumbered customers — at Barnes & Noble in stride.
“God bless you, Tom,” she told Tom Bruzzesi of Fort Myers, who said he’s launching his own presidential campaign.
“I like her,” Bruzzesi said. “She’s kind of a rogue like me.”
“Thank you for coming out today,” O’Donnell said to Louise Campo of Naples.
“She interests me. She’s very conservative,” Campo said.
O’Donnell, a Christian, then politely turned down a request from a young man who asked her to sign his book on demonology instead of a copy of her book.
And now we hear today that Christine's appearance with Sarah Palin at a tea party rally in Indianola, Iowa has been cancelled. Apparently teabaggers objected to witches attending. From the Wall Street Journal blog:
“I made a mistake,” said Ken Crow, president of Tea Party of America. “I assumed there was an open slot and there wasn’t.”
Monday night, Mr. Crow told Washington Wire that Ms. O’Donnell would appear.
Tea Party of America’s co-founder, Charlie Gruschow, said the group withdrew Ms. O’Donnell’s after receiving numerous “emails from a lot of tea party folks that were very disappointed that she would be speaking.”
“We decided not to have her speak,” Mr. Gruschow said. “We felt it was in the best interest of the movement.”
Ms. O’Donnell’s spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.
But O'Donnell did take to Twitter to express her disappointment:
@ChristineOD I was honored to be asked to speak at the Iowa rally this weekend and accepted. Changed my flight to make it work...
Then quickly deleted the tweet/whine.
UPDATE: O'Donnell will be speaking at the tea party powwow in Iowa this weekend after all, reports CNN late Tuesday. Cue witchcraft jokes.
UPDATE 2: Now they've invited her again, after the bad publicity.
After news spread across the Internet that O'Donnell had been dumped by the same tea party movement that catapulted her to victory last September over Rep. Mike Castle in the GOP Delaware Senate primary, tea party leaders had a change of heart and re-invited O'Donnell.
"We're making room for her," Crow told The News Journal late Tuesday. "We welcome her and look forward to hearing her speech."
In a statement, O'Donnell said she has "humbly re-accepted their re-invitation."
..."We're grass-roots people," said Crow, a retired west Texas rodeo cowboy. "We're not professional political operatives."
UPDATE 3: Now Sarah Palin has cancelled, due to “continual lying” from event organizers at Tea Party of America, including a recent mixup over whether former U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell of Delaware would also speak.
