O’Donnell’s Extremist Ties

Think Progress has a report on the 9/12 Patriots group in Delaware, which is led by a man named Russ Murphy. Murphy is not only a birther, but is a member of another extremist group called the “Continental Congress.” The 9/12 Patriots are key backers of Christine O’Donell’s campaign.

During her primary night victory speech, the 9-12 Patriots were the first group O’Donnell thanked, saying “I can‘t thank everyone by name because we would be here until midnight….but I specifically want to thank the 9/12 Patriots for laying the foundation and stirring things up in Delaware.” After her speech, she invited Murphy up to the podium to speak, gave him a hug, and told the crowd: “You’ve got to hear the story about how he started the 9-12 Patriots.” Watch it:

For his book “The Backlash,” author Will Bunch “traveled America looking for the heart of the so-called Tea Party movement” and interviewed members, and sat down with Murphy and two “lieutenants” in the 9-12 Patriots. They explained their opposition to Obama:

The trio led me through a long and mostly fact-free explanation of how Obama only won in 2008 because of the Electoral College, and they even tried to deny his 100,000-vote landslide win in Delaware, finally telling me it was only because of “the handout people” in Wilmington, with its large minority population. Murphy went further, telling me that Obama is “not American” and insisting he hasn’t presented “the documentation” to prove he’s eligible to be commander in chief. The second factor that empowered their movement was the blend of news and misinformation they receive from the popular Fox News Channel and especially from Glenn Beck, whose televised call for the creation of a 9-12 movement is what inspired Murphy to launch his band of “patriots.”

In September, the blog Political Chili outlined some of Murphy’s views that are even more disturbing. He was a “delegate” to the “Continental Congress” held in St. Charles, Illinois in November 2009. The “Articles of Freedom” the delegates produced there called for, among other things, abolition of the Department of Homeland Security, the establishment of 50 state militias, and they declared that President Obama “was not born on U.S. soil” and called for the U.S. Congress to investigate the “citizenship status of the President,” with impeachment as an eventual recourse.

As Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center reported, the “Continental Congress” documents implied violence against the government, saying that “any infringement on the people’s liberty as laid out in the Constitution is ‘an act of WAR’ that ‘the People and their Militias have the Right and Duty to repel.’”

Christine O’Donnell won’t be able to hide her involvement with the 9/12 Patriots group but she did try to scrub references to another extremist on her website, Pamela Geller.

But when it comes to support from the public face of hatred aimed at the planned Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan, the infamous firebrand Pamela Geller, it seems O’Donnell would rather keep her friends to herself.

Sometime in the last week, Geller’s name was scrubbed from O’Donnell’s public list of high-profile endorsers, published on O’Donnell’s campaign website. Geller was one of the first to step up for O’Donnell, endorsing her bid for the Republican Senate nomination in Delaware way back in May. On her Atlas Shrugs website, Geller was effusive in her support for O’Donnell, who at that point was among the longest of the tea party long shots on the political scene.

“Her candidacy instills hopes in Americans in despair,” Geller wrote.

Pamela Geller was the person who started the protests of the Park51 center in New York, but she has a long history of vile and extreme statements. I’ve been amused by Christine O’Donnell’s attempts to distance herself from her own past statements. Apparently Geller is not amused.

Christine O’Donnell has caved to Salon. No, this is not satire. She actually removed my endorsement from her endorsement page. That took, what? Five minutes? Unbelievable, caving to the crazies at Salon whose currency is destroying voices of reason. It is a pity that a “maverick” and “outsider” would lack any spine and exhibit such incredible political cowardice. ENDORSEMENT WITHDRAWN. It’s a shame that this is the quality of people we have representing us against the Obama machine. How can we win?

Salon has a good post on Geller and a screenshot of O’Donnell’s webpage, pre-scrubbing.

Pamela Geller, the main instigator in this summer’s anti-mosque frenzy, is a bigoted conspiracy theorist. She’s a liar and probably slightly insane. She regularly compares Muslims to Nazis. Geller’s called Barack Obama’s birth certificate a forgery, and Obama a Muslim. She published a lengthy “investigation” on her site in 2008 claiming that Obama’s father was actually Malcolm X. And Charles Johnson recently documented her many ties to far-right neo-fascist movements in Europe. Johnson has examples of Geller defending white supremacists and even genocidal war criminals.

She’s not the sort of person whose endorsement you want to advertise.

LOL, I had forgotten Geller was the one pushing the “Malcolm X is Obama’s father” myth.