Turns out courting certain elements of the tea party movement comes back to bite you. It’s going to be very interesting to see how this kind of struggle, which will almost certainly become more common as tea party-supported candidates push out standard GOP candidates, plays out. From the AP:
Republican officials are working to derail the campaign of a tea party supported candidate in North Carolina — circulating documents from the man’s messy divorce that depict him as a pot smoker who has called himself the messiah.
It’s a risky move for state and national party leaders trying to harness the power of the tea party movement without letting it spin out of their control.
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In Hoke County divorce records, his wife said in 1995 that [Tim] D’Annunzio had claimed to be the Messiah, had traveled to New Jersey to raise his stepfather from the dead, believed God would drop a 1,000-mile high pyramid as the New Jerusalem on Greenland and found the Ark of the Covenant in Arizona. A doctor’s evaluation the following month said D’Annunzio used marijuana almost daily, had been living with another woman for several months, had once been in drug treatment for heroin dependence and was jailed a couple times as a teenager.
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“The bigger story is that the power brokers in Raleigh and in Washington are willing to go to any length and use any unscrupulous tactic to try to destroy somebody,” [D’Annunzio] said. “They think that they’re losing their control over the Republican party.”
