Christine O'Donnell's Tea Party: If You Can't Play Nice, She Won't Play at All

So maybe Tea Party member and former Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell is a witch, or something that rhymes with that word. She walked off the "Piers Morgan Tonight" show set at CNN Wednesday, calling the host "rude" for asking her views on abstinence and gay marriage.

But she was the rude one -- making it clear that if you can't play nicely by her rules, she won't play at all.

Anybody in the public domain must understand that when they agree to an interview on a prime time CNN program, they subject themselves to fair questions about pertinent topics. When O'Donnell ran for Senate, her views on gay marriage, abstinence and other sensitive social topics followed her around like a ball and chain.

Only because she was so outspoken on the issues, however -- she forced that issue.

Now, though, she apparently does not want to talk about them. She said she only went on the Piers Morgan show to talk about her new book, "Troublemaker: Let's Do What It Takes to Make America Great Again." Published Tuesday by St. Martin's Press, the book is supposedly an outline of Tea Party principles.

We should be thankful for her book, since many of us have been waiting for clear identification of Tea Party principles beyond a stready stream of bellyaching without solutions to problems to back it all up. We know, for instance, the Tea Party wants a smaller budget and smaller government -- something many of us applaud.

But what we still don't know is what the Tea Party really belives on many issues. Or how, even, they plan to fix the bloated government. We just know they don't like it -- something most of us agree on. Yet we need clear solutions to the problems.

Also, O'Donnell's walk-off from the Piers Morgan show over what she termed as "rude" questions aimed at getting her views on abstinence and gay marriage is perhaps more revealing than her book outlining Tea Party principles. Since one thing we've learned thus far after the Tea Party stormed onto the political scene in the 2010 mid-term elections is they don't like talking about views on social issues.

The U.S. government is far more complex than just a budget, however, making O'Donnell's avoidance of the sensitive questions rather revealing. Since she wrote a book on Tea Party principles, shouldn't she be able to address how she or the Tea Party feels about serious social issues impacting state and federal law and millions of citizens?

Eventually, Tea Party members have to emerge from behind their deficit-complaining cloak. O'Donnell and others have to be willing to speak out, telling us who they are and what they believe. Or eventually, nobody will even care to attempt to interview them at all.