Who??????

Marianne Williamson brings love, peace and a distaste for 'plans' to the debate stage

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

The Democratic field’s heavy hitters dominated the debate stage Thursday night, but it was a spiritual, self-help guru who got a nitro shot of national attention.

Marianne Williamson, a fringe candidate who previously served as a spiritual adviser to Oprah, brought a whole new dimension to the presidential primary as she railed against the idea of “plans” and spoke of harnessing love for political purposes.

She quickly became the most searched candidate in the debate, according to data from Google.

Williamson, who had been cast as a punchline for pundits who pointed out that she bumped a red-state governor and a sitting congressman off the debate stage, stayed silent for the first half hour of the debate before a question was finally directed her way. But her soft spokenness coupled with several well-placed one-liners set Twitter ablaze every time she did speak up.

When asked about her plan to lower the cost of prescription drugs, she knocked Big Pharma and then veered to a theme she would return to throughout the night.

“I’ll tell you one thing, it’s really nice if we’ve got all these plans, but if you think we’re going to beat Donald Trump by just having all these plans, you’ve got another thing coming,” she argued. “Because he didn’t win by saying he had a plan. He won by simply saying Make America Great Again. We’ve got to get deeper than just these superficial fixes, as important as they are.”

She later pointed out that John F. Kennedy “ did not say, ‘I have a plan to get a man to the moon and so we're going to do it and I think we can all work and maybe we can get a man on the moon.’ John Kennedy said, ‘By the end of this decade, we are going to put a man on the moon.’”

(She later clarified that she viewed plans as the domain of a president's Cabinet.)

Williamson found her footing in a line of attack on the conditions of migrant detention centers along the border, accusing the Trump administration of carrying out “state-sponsored” kidnapping and abuse of migrant children. She also drew laughter for dinging the youngest candidates on stage over their push for generational change.

“The fact that somebody has a younger body doesn't mean you don't have old ideas,” she objected.

And when the candidates were polled on the first thing they would do as president, Williamson broke from the rest of the field by offering an unexpected answer.

“My first call is to the prime minister of New Zealand, who said that her goal is to make New Zealand the place where it's the best place in the world for a child to grow up,” she said, interjecting before former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper finished his response. “And I would tell her, ‘Girlfriend, you are so wrong.’ Because the United States of America is going to be the best place in the world for a child to grow up.”

The offbeat nature of her answers and her general presence on stage set off a race to unearth her prior tweets, which she’s been sending to her 2.6-million-plus followers.

“You're a lamp; God is the electricity. You're a faucet; God is the water. You're a human; God is the divine within you. ALLOW the flow. #fb,” Williamson tweeted in March 2010.

“God is BIG, swine flu SMALL. See every cell of your body filled with divine light. Pour God's love on our immune systems. Truth protects,” she wrote in April 2009.

“All the films were good but AVATAR has changed the world. He didn't win an Oscar tonight, but James Cameron deserves a Nobel Peace Price #fb,” she sent in March 2010.

During her closing statement on Thursday, while lamenting that “I’m sorry we haven’t talked more,” she made her case against plans once again in a moment that sealed her viral status online.

“Donald Trump is not going to be beaten just by insider politics talk. He's not going to be beaten just somebody who has plans,” Williamson said.

“He's going to be beaten by somebody who has an idea what this man has done. This man has reached into the psyche of the American people and he has harnessed fear for political purposes. So, Mr. President, if you're listening, I want you to hear me, please. You have harnessed fear for political purposes and only love can cast that out,” she continued.

“So I, sir, I have a feeling you know what you're doing. I'm going to harness love for political purposes. I will meet you on that field. And, sir, love will win.”