What’s the matter with Delaware Republicans?


Lauren Witzke is yet another QAnon supporter who has won a Republican primary and is going to be the party’s candidate for a federal office, this time for the senate seat in Delaware. But it appears that QAnon is not the only thing she believes in. She also has dabbled with flat-Earth and 9/11 conspiracy theories. She will challenge incumbent Democratic senator Chris Coons.

What’s up with Delaware nominating these kooky Republican candidates? Some of you may recall Christine (“I am not a witch”) O’ Donnell, a Tea Party backed candidate who.won a surprise victory in the 2010 primary, defeating nine-term U.S. Representative and former governor Michael Castle for the Republican nomination. O’Donnell projected a persona of cheerful goofiness that masked a harsh right wing agenda full of crazy stuff such as saying at one point “American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they’re already into this experiment.” She was endorsed by right-wing groups.

Her campaign was marred by all manner of controversies centering around her education, where she claimed academic accomplishments that were not valid, and campaign violations, when it was charged that she was using campaign finances to pay for her living expenses as if it was her personal income. But what really got people’s attention was something quite trivial when she said on a TV show that she had dabbled in witchcraft when she was younger and although she never joined a coven, the group had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar. This is the kind of thing people do when they are young but it really blew up. Then she made matters worse with the infamous political ad that made her really famous, in which she declared “I am not a witch”.

That ad led to this parody by Kristen Wiig on Saturday Night Live.

Comments

  1. Holms says

    “But it appears that QAnon is not the only thing she believes in. She also has dabbled with flat-Earth and 9/11 conspiracy theories.”
    Hardly a surprise, conspiracist thinking is a prerequisite for Q believers.

  2. says

    It’s trivial to prove the Earth is not flat. The only way the Sun can be observed rising and setting perpendicular to the horizon, at different times at different points on the Earth’s surface, is if the Earth is curved.

  3. Mano Singham says

    bluerizlagirl @#2,

    Unfortunately for every piece of evidence that one gives for why the Earth is not flat, they will add on another ad hoc hypothesis that ‘explains’ it away. It is the same argumentative strategy used by young-Earthers, anti-evolutionists, climate change deniers, and believers in any and all conspiracy theories. This enables them to hold on to their beliefs in spite of evidence that we think convincingly undermines it.

    My book spent quite a bit of time discussing this issue.

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