To paraphrase something I read before George W. Bush's reelection, Harry Reid is toast but for a toaster. The Senate Majority Leader faces a litany of problems that should render him almost unelectable. He has low approval and high disapproval ratings with a large percentage of strong disapproval. If we also consider the anti-incumbent fever sweeping the nation, Nevada's economic woes and buyer's remorse over electing President Obama (he won the state with 55% of the vote but his current approval rating in Nevada is lower than the national average), and the fact that among Nevada's likely voters, self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals by a margin of nearly two to one, Senator Reid is in serious trouble.
Republicans were given a wide margin of error in their effort to flip this important seat. Any credible candidate would automatically become a prohibitive favorite to win simply by virtue of Reid's challenges. I'm pretty sure Nevada Republicans could have successfully run Wayne Newton. However, to a rousing chorus of "Danke Schoen" from Democrats everywhere, they chose one of the few Nevadans who could actually lose to Senator Reid. To use a baseball analogy, Republicans only had to hold onto their 10 run lead in the bottom of the 9th inning. Then they went to the bullpen for the righty, Sharron Angle.
If Reid manages to hold his seat, Republicans will learn a painful lesson about overindulging the lunatic fringe of the Tea Party, or as I call this subgroup, the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. I suppose at some point we'll get used to Sharron Angle, but for the moment her antics are still jaw-dropping. Indeed, part of me suspects that after the election we'll see a movie in the vein of Borat, at which point we'll learn that she was only toying with us. While this is unlikely, it still seems more plausible than a major party candidate for the U.S. Senate who is this bad.
I remember a sitcom episode in the 70's, in which a Ted Baxter style character (possibly Ted Baxter) was running for office and his handlers, whenever told that the candidate would be asked questions, responded with stammering trepidation, "H...hard questions?" We all laughed, but that fictional character is essentially the real Sharron Angle. I'm not exaggerating when I say that she holds "press conferences" and runs for daylight before anyone can ask a single question.
There is good reason for Sharron Angle to evade the press. Her strategy is clear: She will only speak directly to the far right and count on everyone else to vote against Harry Reid while knowing nothing about her. That would explain why she threatened to sue Senator Reid for publishing what she trumpeted on her own website as the reason to vote for her in the primary. Of course as soon as she won the primary, she wanted to erase all evidence of her positions in an effort to mislead either primary voters or general election voters by trying to sell different views to each electorate.
Among the jaw-dropping antics referred to above, she went on Fox News, an outlet very sympathetic to a right-wing candidate, but still shocked the host by proclaiming that the media should only ask the questions she wants to answer. As the stunned broadcaster sat there asking himself if she could really be that naive, she smirked and took the opportunity to twice squeeze in free plugs for her website and beg for $25 donations. This reminded me of people who would call into serious radio and television shows just so they could blurt out, "Howard Stern" and hang up. Like these puerile Stern fans, Sharron Angle is an intellectual toddler who is no more qualified to serve in the Senate than she is to play nose tackle for the Redskins.
Her outrageous positions, for instance, women are wrong to work instead of staying home to raise children, gay adoption should be illegal, teen rape victims should be forced to carry the resulting pregnancies to term, Democrats are idolaters who literally worship government as their god, etc. make good headlines but would make abysmal law. Not only does she have no new ideas, she doesn't have any that weren't already frayed around the edges 40 years ago. She brings absolutely nothing of value to the table and we can't afford to waste a Senate seat on her.
