It’s ironic that Nevada’s ill-fated GOP Senatorial nomination hopeful Sue Lowden was lampooned (including by me) for being the “chicken lady” when it’s turning out that the truly fowl foul candidate is the GOPer who got the nomination: none other than Sharron Angle, a Tea Party member totally enmeshed in the country’s demonizing, polarizing talk show political culture where perspective is the dirtiest word yet.
Given some of Angle’s pronouncements and her penchant for running from the reporters who ask tough questions or follow up questions (that means she appears a lot on Fox News) Angle has a)managed to make the uninspiring and highly political Harry Reid look like an inspiring statesman and b)you can’t joke that she is in the Twilight Zone anymore: she is now in a distant galaxy (which probably means she will win with lots of talk radio and ideological cable talk show host support).
The Harry Reid campaign thinks they’ve found another high-octane Sharron Angle quote that will help them paint her as too harsh and extreme for the Senate: She claimed last night that Senator Robert Bennett, who was ousted by the Tea Partiers last month, had “outlived his usefulness.”
The Reid camp plans to go on the offensive against Angle’s claim, in order to make the case that she’s the “queen of over the top rhetoric,” as one adviser just told me. They’re linking it to other harsh Angle quotes, such as her hint that citizens may soon resort to “Second Amendment remedies.”
Angle, a Tea Party favorite, made the claim about the 77-year-old Bennett on Fox News late yesterday. She had been asked to respond to Bennett’s apparent criticism of the Tea Party, in which he said that there are “too many people willing to give up on America from the right”…
At least you can thank Angle for a public service in her statement: she has now articulated what many people have long known. Politicians are expendable — particularly expendable these days to partisans who are no longer just blinded by party but by we-are-good-and-they-are-evil ideological purity.
Once upon a time, a smart politician would move heaven and earth to win over some GOPers who might be sympathetic to another high profile Republican such as Bennett, bite their tongues to mend fences and get those votes. Instead, Angle opted for another trip to a distant galaxy — going way beyond that condo on Mars where Republican Alan Keyes lives or that timeshare on the moon sometimes frequented by Democrat Dennis Kucinich.
But she’ll be loved and cheered by Rush, Sean, and Glenn whose blessings bring votes as loyal listeners decide they’ll like what their best friends’ talk show hosts like, too.
I neglected to mention Angle’s ridiculous remarks this week about a key local issue in Nevada. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) intervened recently to save tens of thousands of jobs in his state, helping secure loans for the MGM Resorts’ City Center complex. Angle recently conceded, had she been Nevada’s senator at the time, she wouldn’t have bothered to intervene, and those tens of thousands of jobs would have been lost.
Asked to clarify, Angle later said she wouldn’t have helped the City Center complex because she opposed last year’s stimulus package. But in reality, the stimulus had nothing to do with the City Center complex — Reid showed leadership to save the project, but didn’t use public funds — and Angle’s remarks made absolutely no sense.
When a local reporter tried to get clarification and ask Angle what she was talking about, she said journalists are not allowed to ask the Senate candidate follow-up questions.
So, to review, Angle holds radical, extremist views. She’s proven to be an awful state lawmaker. She’s uninformed about key local issues, and won’t answer reporters’ questions.
I know Sue Lowden had the “chicken for checkups” problem, but there have to be some Nevada Republicans with some severe buyer’s remorse right now.
Probably not: there are many who’ll vote for Angle because she’s not Harry Reid, she is a Republican, she is a conservative, she is a tea party member and because of her high-concept, lash-out polemics.
FOOTNOTE: There are thoughtful Republicans. But with comments such as these, Angle is increasingly making the case that she is not one of them.
Which perhaps suggests that if she wins Nevada’s Senate seat she’ll fit in perfectly, given the current political trending in Congress.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.