It’s become a staple of the tea party candidacy. You make a big splash onto the national stage then quickly retreat from any press scrutiny because you are so unprepared and ill-equipped for the rigors of the job that tough questions will expose you as the charlatan you are.
Sarah Palin, a lot of people forget, ducked the national press for days after she was picked for vice president by John McCain. Only after careful scripting and staging, did Palin finally do interviews with the national press — only to get ground to bits by Katie Couric no less. Rand Paul is the exception that proves the rule: after capturing the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate from Kentucky, he made disastrous TV appearances first and then vanished from the scene. Taking that lesson to heart, Senate GOP nominee Sharron Angle declined any national TV appearances after her primary win in Nevada.
And now comes Christine O’Donnell, who has long experience doing TV — 22 appearances on Bill Maher’s old show alone — but who is so not ready for prime time, or Sunday morning, that she’s canceled her appearances tomorrow on CBS’ Face The Nation and Fox News Sunday.
She can’t even handle Fox.
David Kurtz
David Kurtz is Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Talking Points Memo where he oversees the news operations of TPM and its sister sites.