Her roughly 10-minute speech to Wednesday's rally was more of a pep talk - she enthused several times that talk-radio icon Rush Limbaugh was now discussing her campaign - that shied away from issues in a state with 8.7 percent unemployment.
During the 1990s, O'Donnell - long active in both conservative and Catholic causes - made a name for herself largely with her outspoken views on social issues. She appeared on shows like "Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect" as an advocate for abstinence, told MTV viewers that she considered masturbation sinful and suggested in a 1998 article that looking at porn is equivalent to adultery. Her best-known client as a marketing consultant was Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ."
After Wednesday's speech, she insisted that social issues like promiscuity are not on her radar screen if she gets elected to Washington.
"That has nothing to do with this campaign!" O'Donnell said, sounding exasperated, adding: "Well, I'm a social conservative that's obvious, but none of this is relevant to the campaign."
Instead, her first agenda item, if elected, points to some of the obstacles that Republicans - whose main thrust as a minority party has been to use the Senate filibuster to block most Democratic proposals - may face if given a chance to govern.
O'Donnell said she will fight first and foremost to repeal the health-care law signed by Obama earlier this year, even though a presidential veto would surely impede any such rollback.
"If we can pass in the House and the Senate a bill to repeal that, and then Barack Obama vetoes that, blatantly ignoring the will of the people . . . he's setting himself up to be very vulnerable for his re-election," she insisted.
And for the band of tea partiers rallying around O'Donnell this week, Obama's 2012 vulnerability may be the most powerful message they want to send out at the polls in 2010.
