Topic category:  Government/Politics

Meredith Viera's post-election interview of Christine O'Donnell on NBC's "Today" went as expected.

Tea partiers, take note:

NBC is delighted to promote O'Donnell as the face of the Tea Party.

O'Donnell is delighted to be promoted.

NBC is delighted to have O'Donnell blame the Republican establishment for her loss.

O'Donnell is delighted to blame anyone but herself. (She even blamed the Republican establishment for her "I am not a witch" commercial, which she now concedes was a mistake (although not her fault).

Watch the interview: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/40024863#40024863.

Viera knew what to ask,,,and what not to ask.

O'Donnell blasted the Republican Party for not getting her elected after she won the 2010 primary.

Viera did NOT ask the obvious question: since O'Donnell had run as a write-in candidate in 2006 after winning but 17% of the vote in the Republican Party, why did she expect the Republican party to make her race its main priority.

O'Donnell seemed pleased to have gotten 40% of the vote in this year's Delaware Senate race. (She got 4% as a write-in candidate in 2006 and 35% in the 2008 race.)

An O'Donnell fan emailed: "What if the Republican Establishment had gotten behind her instead of licking its wounds and stabbing her in the back?"

She would have lost! She is too flawed a candidate. The Republican establishment could not provide her with the education and the experience she lacks, or cover up her past mistakes.

Ironically, Karl Rove helped O'Donnell raise millions of dollars by allowing her to run against him. She didn't lose for fund of funds.

Liberal Democrats in Delaware must be hoping for O'Donnell to run again in 2012, because she's not electable in Delaware.

Smart Tea Partiers helped Scott Brown shock the world early this year by winning a Senate seat in liberal Massachusetts over Democrat Martha Coakley. They realized that Brown was not a Reagan conservative, but he was the conservatives' best bet.

The year before, there was a similar success as Chris Christie was elected governor of New Jersey, beating incumbent Jon Corzine. In the primary on June 2, Christie won the Republican nomination with 55% of the vote, defeating more conservative opponents.

We are much better off with electable candidates like Scott Brown and Chris Christie than unelectable ones like O'Donnell.

The media did not make mentally challenged South Carolina Democrat gubernatorial candidate Alvin Greene the Democrat face in the 2010 election and instead treated him as an anomaly.

Unfortunately for conservatives, O'Donnell became the Republican candidate instead of the electable Mike Castle and there will be one less Republican in the Senate when the next Congress convenes.

Maybe others. Republican Tea party favorites Sharron Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado and Joe Miller in Alaska were not helped by the national coverage of O'Donnell and the winner in Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey, carefully kept O'Donnell at arm's length, and still won by less than he seemed likely to after Pennsylvania Democrats tried to tie him to O'Donnell.

Team Obama would be pleased to have the Tea Party become a political party and field its own candidates.

Failing that, it will have to be satisfied with trying to paint Tea Party-backed candidates as too extreme and to focus attention on unelectables like O'Donnell to taint the Tea party movement.

Conservative South Carolina, which sends Jim DeMint to the Senate, should be able to send someone much better than Lindsay Graham too.

But political reality is that liberal Massachusetts is doing the best it currently can with Senator Scott Brown...and that's much better than Senator Martha Coakley.

But for the personally ambitious O'Donnell, we'd all be better off with Senator Mike Castle instead of Senator Chris Coons, and liberal Delaware would hve elected him.

Biennial Delaware Senate candidate O'Donnell's inability to acknowledge that and immature insistence on whining and blaming others because she wasn't elected, together with her write-in campaign in 2006 after losing the Republican Senate primary, show that her perpetual campaign is more about herself than principles and she's not ready for prime time.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.