Pray tell where Sharron Angle gets campaign advice

God, the infallible campaign adviser, has a plan for Sharron Angle's U.S. Senate candidacy against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

I have learned this not from the ultimate source, mind you, but from a recent interview Angle gave to David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

"When God calls you he also equips you and he doesn't just say, 'Well, today you're going to run against Harry Reid,' " Angle said. "There is preparation. Everyone in the Bible, when you read the Bible, you can see that preparatory time. Moses had his preparatory time. Paul had his preparatory time. Even Jesus had his preparatory time. And so my preparation began on a (Nye County) school board."

Moses. Paul. Jesus. Sharron.

That's good company. For a hack politician to compare her journey in any way to the roads traveled by Moses, Paul or Jesus is simply audacious, but in a short few months Angle has gained national notoriety for uttering such jaw-dropping jibberish.

Most of those statements have come during softball interviews with the conservative media and the Reid-hating Fox News.

Thanks to that recent CBN interview, I already know Angle's thoughts: As a member of the liberal media I am twisting her words.

Trouble is, the quote is accurate. She can argue she meant to say it differently, but to do that she'll have to grant an interview with someone who might ask more questions.

Angle hasn't answered many questions from the mainstream press.

This past week she canceled an editorial board meeting with the Review-Journal and an interview with the "Nevada Newsmakers" television program. Her scheduler claimed she had overbooked and couldn't find an hour for Nevada's largest newspaper, the one that for months has been on an editorial rampage to eviscerate Reid. Liberal media, indeed.

As an aside, have you ever noticed God seldom asks politicians not to run for office?

Think about it. When was the last time a perennial office-seeker announced he had prayed about it and the message was: Stay home, feed the poor, help the sick, mow the lawn?

No, the call is always: Run, baby, run.

So Angle finds herself in the race of her life. At the risk of showing my liberal media bias, candidate Angle owes Nevadans some answers to tough questions.

First she needs to explain some of her absurd recent public statements, such as this one on the conservative Alan Stock radio show. Reid called banks to try to save a struggling CityCenter with thousands of jobs at stake. Would Angle have done the same?

"No, I would not," Angle said. "You know the reason is because he may have saved jobs in CityCenter, but he actually cost jobs in other parts of the city. And you know that as well as I do. The issue here becomes bailouts, right? And stimulus. We want something that is not going to bail out and stimulate. What we want is deregulate, lower taxes, give businesses some breathing room to do what they do best, which is create jobs."

Earth to Angle: In the real world, senators pick up the phone. Reid did. So did Angle supporter Republican Sen. John Ensign.

It's not only providing constituent service, part of a senator's job; it's also showing you give a damn whether thousands are out of work.

Angle has called Reid's CityCenter call a "bank bailout." It wasn't. She has called it economic "stimulus." It wasn't.

It was a privately funded construction project.

Of course, Reid's camp is having a field day with this. In hardball politics, this is batting practice.

There's a reason Angle's poll numbers are tanking despite Reid's resounding unpopularity and Nevada's high unemployment rate. But you can't blame the good Lord or the Searchlight senator for it.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.