Maher talks O'Donnell

Politico.com:

U.S. Senate hopeful Christine O’Donnell has certainly made a name for herself recently, but she’s managed to help out someone else along the way, too: Bill Maher.

Maher, who now helms HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher, host has troves of noteworthy O’Donnell moments in the archives from his show "Politically Incorrect," on which O'Donnell frequently appeared as a guest. (It was on “Politically Incorrect,” for instance, that O’Donnell confessed to having dabbled in witchcraft in the past.)

Suddenly, Maher found himself sitting atop one of the most potent collections of TV clips of the election season.

In an interview with POLITICO Tuesday, Maher explained O’Donnell's appeal as a guest.

“We had four seats to fill five nights a week, 46 weeks a year,” Maher said. “But what really appealed to us was that she made good TV,” he said, adding that she was a “religious nut.”

Maher, who’s personally liberal but has earned the friendship and respect of many conservatives who regularly appear on his program, also called O’Donnell “attractive and extremely nice.”

“I keep saying that she could be a better Sarah Palin because she has the same loony belief system — but she’s nice. Sarah Palin is mean," Maher said.

O’Donnell, according to Maher, “has that Reagan-esque sunny disposition and can say anything with that smile.”

But Maher isn’t buying the notion that O’Donnell — having already pulled out one of the political season’s biggest upsets in her defeat of Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware's Republican Senate primary — will actually prevail in November.

“Of course anything can happen in politics," he said. "But I would be extremely surprised if she could win in Delaware. If she was running in Alabama, that’s a different story. But I have to hope that Delaware still has a level of sophistication that would not allow them to vote her into the Senate."

On Maher’s most recent HBO program, he extended an open invitation to O’Donnell to come back into the fold.

“I’m just saying, Christine, it’s like a hostage crisis. Every week you don’t show up, I’m going to throw another body out," he said. (Maher was referring to additional clips of O’Donnell’s appearances on his programs that he could air). He called O’Donnell “a close friend of mine” and told his audience that “I created her.”

“You owe me Christine O’Donnell," he said.

“I’m very hurt that someone who I had such a hand in making famous, put on the show 22 times, suddenly has forgotten her roots and has forgotten where she came from, forgotten who her daddy is,” Maher told POLITICO.

“I would have never shown that clip of the witchcraft quote if she had come on," he said.