Christine O’Donnell can’t wait to work with Hillary Clinton as a Senate Foreign Relations Committee member
Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell may be down by double digits in the polls, but she’s already choosing her committee seats. And her first choice? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee. During her debate Wednesday night, O’Donnell said that she was a huge fan of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and that, if she were ...
Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell may be down by double digits in the polls, but she's already choosing her committee seats. And her first choice? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell may be down by double digits in the polls, but she’s already choosing her committee seats. And her first choice? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
During her debate Wednesday night, O’Donnell said that she was a huge fan of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and that, if she were elected, she would use her new perch on the panel to speak with Clinton regularly about world affairs.
"She’s someone I look forward to working with," O’Donnell said. "As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee in the U.S. Senate I will have direct conversations with her about where we should be taking our foreign policy and I look forward to that."
"She is someone that I admire, she is a woman who has had to hold her own in a man’s world, and I think she’s doing an amazing job right now," O’Donnell also said, singling out the former senator as the model of the Democratic official she could get along with.
SFRC spokesman Frederick Jones tells The Cable that O’Donnell might be jumping the gun by assuming she will get the committee assignment.
"At the beginning of each congress, the majority and minority leader have to agree on the number of Democrats and Republicans on each committee. Once that happens, they decide for their respective parties which Senators will be on a particular committee," he said.
If she is chosen, perhaps one of the things O’Donnell might kibbitz about with Clinton when they have their first chat would be O’Donnell’s many concerns with the New START treaty that Clinton is pushing. Clinton might also want to touch base on O’Donnell’s position, as stated on her campaign website, that "terrorism is an act of war requiring the full force of our intelligence and military resources rather than granting terrorists precious Constitutional rights and outsourcing our foreign policy to the U.N."
O’Donnell actually praises Clinton a lot on the campaign trail. She’s apparently also under the impression that she’s seen "many Hillary for President ads running," and she "would love" it if Clinton would endorse her.
Some in the blogosphere are criticizing O’Donnell for not being able to come up with the name of one sitting Democratic senator she could work with if elected. She eventually put forth the name of Joseph Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.
Meanwhile, her opponent, Democrat Chris Coons, named several Republicans he could envision reaching across the aisle to work with, including Richard Lugar (R-IN), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Maine Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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