More Info on Christie O'Donnell

Here's more information on Christie O'Donnell, the Tea Party victor of the Delaware Republican Senate race and Sarah Palin clone:

O'Donnell first came into the public eye in the 1990s as a foot soldier of the religious right, becoming a press secretary for the anti-abortion group Concerned Women for America, which aims "to bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy." A devout (and still unmarried) Catholic, she founded the Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth, which promoted abstinence and Christian sexual values among college students—an effort that resulted in her now-infamous crusade against masturbation. In 1997, she denounced the government for devoting too much money to AIDS treatment and prevention, criticizing a drag queen ball for celebrating "the type of lifestyle which leads to the disease." From the gays and abortion to evolution—which she's called "a theory" that "too many people are blindly accepting…as fact"—O'Donnell has been a Christian right champion.

A beneficiary of both tea party anger and religious right fervor, O'Donnell represents the potential overlap between Christian conservatives and anti-government activists. She's building this coalition just as the religious right's old power players are trying to ride the coattails of the tea party back into the spotlight. At his Faith and Freedom conference in Washington last week, former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed attempted to cast small-government conservatism as an extension of God's will. As my colleague Stephanie Mencimer reported, national tea party leaders like Mark Meckler are harping on the "removal of God from the public square," suggesting a possible marriage between the two movements. Sarah Palin, beloved by tea partiers and Christian conservatives alike, has laid the groundwork for this union to happen—as has Glenn Beck at his overtly religious rally at the Lincoln Memorial last month.