Sharron Angle’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
Despite the best efforts of Angle’s new DC handlers to hide her extreme agenda, the real Sharron Angle keeps resurfacing as she bleeds public support
LAS VEGAS – With just two months until Election Day, a new poll out from a GOP-leaning firm shows Sharron Angle once again losing to Sen. Harry Reid, whose support has increased by 14 points in just two months. After a week like this, it's easy to understand why.
Despite the very best efforts of her new DC handlers, this week provided a slew of negative media coverage that further revealed why Sharron Angle is too extreme and dangerous to represent Nevadans in Washington.
Starting on Sunday’s five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, it was revealed that Sharron Angle would have voted “no” on the $62 billion relief package. Angle’s opposition to helping the victims of the worst natural disaster in American history is so extreme that she would have been the only US Senator to oppose the package, which passed on a 97-0 vote. (The firestorm of national criticism continued throughout the week, with Angle’s new DC handlers slightly walking back her comments by Thursday.)
MONDAY: While Angle was defending her extreme position on Katrina, Sen. Reid received the endorsement of numerous law enforcement officials – led by former Clark County Sheriff and Republican Bill Young -- who praised his leadership in delivering for Nevada, and criticized Sharron Angle’s extreme record in the State Assembly. Angle repeatedly voted against giving law enforcement the tools they need to keep Nevadans safe, siding with perpetrators of domestic violence over victims. Hear what else Young had to say about why he’s supporting Harry Reid.
TUESDAY: Angle’s extreme and dangerous agenda for Nevada’s economy came front and center. The Reid campaign released a new television ad highlighting Angle’s callous view that out-of work Nevadans are “spoiled” by their unemployment benefits. Angle has repeatedly stated she would have voted against helping unemployed Nevadans put food on the table while they look for work. Later that day, top Angle backer Sen. John Ensign told Alan Stock’s radio audience that Sharron Angle was wrong to oppose Sen. Reid’s and his efforts to save 22,000 jobs at CityCenter. Despite the stakes, Angle has said she wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help keep thousands of Nevadans on the job. And just to add insult to injury, another Angle backer – Danny Tarkanian – was called out as “not the world’s most effective surrogate” after he inadvertently called attention to Sharron Angle’s plan to kill Social Security in a flubbed attempt to defend her.
WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY: Sharron Angle was taken to task in Las Vegas and Reno for her strident opposition to the popular Millennium Scholarship program by Republican former First Lady Dawn Gibbons and Nevada students relying on the program to get an education. This was the second time this week where prominent Republicans blasted Angle for her extreme and dangerous agenda, highlighting once again the inability of her DC handlers to stop Republicans from fleeing her camp.
THURSDAY PART TWO: Former Las Vegas reporter Molly Ball wrote a stunning expose on Sharron Angle’s close affiliation with the radical extremist Independent American Party (IAP), giving context to some of her less than mainstream positions. Much to the chagrin of her new DC handlers who are working night and day to reinvent their candidate, the piece undermined their efforts by reviving her long held beliefs that the separation of church and state is unconstitutional, daughters who are raped by their fathers should turn a "lemon situation into lemonade", armed insurrection is an acceptable remedy to defeat at the ballot box and that Social Security is a violation of the First Commandment.
FRIDAY: Sharron Angle is mocked throughout national media outlets following her weekly appearance on Heidi Harris’ right-wing radio program where she asserted that unemployment insurance “doesn’t benefit anyone” – this from a candidate who is still feeling the wrath of Nevada’s unemployed for calling them “spoiled” and stating unequivocally that it’s not her job to create jobs.
No, Sharron Angle can’t afford many more weeks like this one.
“With exactly two months left until election day, Sharron Angle’s precipitous drop in polls and her total inability to arrest her downward spiral suggests the efforts of her new DC handlers aren’t working,” said Reid campaign spokesman Kelly Steele. “The attempts of Sharron Angle’s handlers to remake her as anything but the extreme and dangerous candidate that would eliminate Social Security and Medicare, abolish the Department of Education, and turn Nevada into America’s nuclear dumping ground can’t be changed, muzzled or papered over.”
