Did Christine O'Donnell plan to walk off 'Piers Morgan'? (VIDEO)

Christine O’Donnell walked off the taping of an interview for the 'Piers Morgan Tonight' show Wednesday when Morgan pressed her on gay marriage. Had she planned the hasty exit all along?

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Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP/File
In this Sept. 17, 2010 file photo, Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O' Donnell delivers remarks at Values Voter Summit in Washington.

Former Delaware Senate hopeful Christine O’Donnell fled the taping of an interview for the "Piers Morgan Tonight" show on Wednesday. Ms. O’Donnell, who is perhaps most famous for being the only candidate in the 2010 election cycle to publicly declare that she was not a witch, felt that Mr. Morgan was “borderline being a little bit rude.”

Was he really being rude? In our experience the suave former British news presenter and current CNN host could charm the wrinkles off an elephant. So here’s our theory: The whole thing was a set-up; not in the sense that they’d agreed to disagree beforehand, but in the sense that O’Donnell and her publicists had discussed what might happen, and agreed she might bolt if the talk reached a certain point.

Remember, O’Donnell was on the show to promote her new book, “Trouble Maker: Let’s Do What It Takes to Make America Great Again.” Being on "Piers Morgan" is great for that, but walking off "Piers Morgan" in a huff and thus rising to the top of the Google Trends hot topics on Thursday morning is even better.

So Morgan pressed her on the topic of gay marriage, and O’Donnell took umbrage (not Dolores Umbridge – 10 points for Gryffindor if you get that reference) and left. The result: No divisive quotes from her about gay unions, and the whole flap got lots of press. Mischief managed!

We’d rather have seen Morgan follow up the not-a-witch thing. To recap, if you’ve forgotten (or the Ministry of Magic has wiped your memory): During her campaign last year for Delaware’s open Senate seat, comedian Bill Maher dredged up old clips of O’Donnell from his show in which she talked about dabbling in witchcraft as a youth.

“I never joined a coven,” she said at the time.

In her new book, excerpts of which have been published online by ABC, she says the whole thing was a “nothing” remark about a minor incident far back in time, and that she’s hurt and surprised Maher did what he did.

(Hurt and surprised? Maybe she never watched the show except when she was on.)

She details the process whereby her campaign put up the famous ad, which began with her saying, “I’m not a witch.”

Her first choice was to run a response ad with a production company called Screaming Dime, but the firm was not available, she said. So she went with a suggestion from national Republicans in Washington, and chose a group headed by veteran campaigner Fred Davis.

It was Mr. Davis’s idea to do the witch thing, and he began his pitch to her by saying she was going to hate it. Yes, yes, she did. But she did it anyway.

To which we say, if your first choice in this matter was a firm called Screaming Dime, something exciting was probably going to happen in any case.

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