Angle returns to offer chaos on campaign trail

If you’d have asked me before the close of filing last week, I’d have told you I didn’t think there was any way former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle would file to run again for U.S. Senate.

After her disastrous 2010 loss to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, characterized by racist television commercials, outlandish allusions to violence and self-comparisons to Jesus Christ, I figured Angle’s public life was pretty much over. The most she would ever do, I thought, was continue to hawk her self-published books and peddle vague, evidence-free allusions to the 2010 election being stolen by means of fraud.

Turns out, I was wrong.

About Angle, that is. She did file for Senate, creating a primary challenge to Rep. Joe Heck, a man whose conservative credentials she questioned on Alan Stock’s KXNT-AM 840 radio show on March 8, when Stock literally begged her not to run.

But Angle, who has a new book out, would not be denied. In fact, she telegraphed her case on Stock’s program when she said that the people are being ignored by elected officials, resulting in angry protest votes for outsiders such as Donald Trump.

Then again, she also said that when she was asked to run by state Sen. Don Gustavson, R-Sparks, and Assemblyman Brent Jones, R-Las Vegas, “I said, well, if you’ve got the money, I’ve got the time.”

It will be interesting to see the extent to which Angle embraces Trump. While both have a penchant for saying anything that comes to mind, they couldn’t be more different. Angle is a deeply religious, bona fide conservative who believes sticking to her principles is more important than nearly anything else. Trump has changed his positions on a number of key issues, and speaks openly on the campaign trail of the value of flexibility and deal-making. He may talk tough, but a true movement conservative he’s not.

The Democratic campaign of former Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto undoubtedly popped some Champagne corks when they heard the news, but there is a serious downside for them in an Angle candidacy. Yes, Heck will find his record compared and contrasted with Angle’s conservative orthodoxy. But one result of that contrast will be to show that Heck is not nearly as conservative as Angle. To be sure, top conservative groups that issue scorecards of lawmakers put Heck between 53 percent and 65 percent conservative, nowhere near the top.

That could undercut Cortez Masto’s preferred general election strategy, which is to run against Heck as a tea-partying right winger who’s way too far to the right for Nevada’s voters. Compared with Angle, Heck is downright moderate! (The truth — which could be obscured in both primary and general — is that Heck is fairly conservative and a ready vote for the Republican leadership on most issues.)

But that may be hard to see in a race with Angle, the woman who once said rape victims should take that lemon situation and make lemonade (i.e. be forced under the law to carry their attacker’s baby to term). Heck may be opposed to birthright citizenship, but he’s never aired an overtly racist ad featuring Hispanics stalking the border, or told a room full of Latino students that “some of you look a little more Asian to me.” Heck is pro-gun, but he’s never suggested political problems might be solved with “Second Amendment remedies.” And Heck, a Catholic, has never said anything about God preparing him to run for office in the same way he prepared Moses or Jesus for their earthly missions on behalf of the Almighty.

Sharron Angle is back! What will she say this time?

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and co-host of the show “PoliticsNOW,” airing at 5:30 p.m. Sundays on 8NewsNow. Read his blog at SlashPolitics.com, follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.