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Tea Party darling O'Donnell doesn't want to talk about sex anymore

Before she became a darling of the Tea Party movement and a threat to the GOP establishment, not just in Delaware but nationally, conservative Senate hopeful Christine O;Donnell developed something of a reputation as a pundit with outspoken views about things that that even socially conservative talking heads sometimes shy away from -- things like premarital sex, porn, even masturbation.

As noted earlier this week on the top political blog Talking Points Memo:

O'Donnell has said, for example, that masturbation is wrong, and that looking at pornography is equivalent to cheating on your spouse. She outlined her views in a November 1998 article titled "The Case for Chastity" for Cultural Dissident.

She wrote:

"When a married person uses pornography, or is unfaithful, it compromises not just his (or her) purity, but also compromises the spouse's purity. As a church, we need to teach a higher standard than abstinence. We need to preach a righteous lifestyle."

A dozen years later, O'Donnell may get an opportunity to bring her ideas to the corridors of the Capitol, the greatest bully pulpit in the world. In the election to fill the Delaware Senate seat once occupied by Vice President Joe Biden, O'Donnell and her Tea Party allies are in a seeming neck and neck dogfight with the establishment candidate, the more moderate U.S. Rep.and former governor Mike Castle. The primary is Tuesday, and given the expected GOP tsunami, an O'Donnell upset would give her at least a decent shot in November, even in nominally blue (hen?) Delaware.

Last night, I spent the longest two hours of my life (more on that in tomorrow's Daily News) at a Tea Party Express rally outside the state capitol in Dover where O'Donnell -- whose youthful attractiveness and right-wing views have garnered more than a few comparisons to a certain ex-half-tern Alaska governor -- spoke and then answered reporters' questions.

Except about sex. When I tried to ask her if she's use her Senate platform to push issues such as reduciug promiscuity, her tone became somewhat indignant:

That has nothing to do with this campaign! That has nothing to do with this campaign (exasoerated tone.). That has nothing to do with this campaign, alright? Well, I'm a social conservative that's obvious, but none of this is relevant to the campagn. Everybody knows my platform, they're up on my website.

I wanted to follow-up, and ask her her views on related issues such as abortion. But she abruptly ended her impormptu news conference about 20 seconds after that. Earlier, O'Donnell said her initial legislative push -- the winner of the election takes office immediately in November because it is a special election due to Biden's 2009 resignation -- will one that has no chance of becoming law. That would be a repeal of the Obama health care plan that she acknowledges would be vetoed by the incumbent POTUS.

More later...