Cornyn: Angle may need “a few weeks” to get campaign together

It may be "a few weeks" before Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle is able to hold her own in the glare of the big-time political spotlight, in the view of the party's top strategist.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told reporters Tuesday evening it could take that long for Angle to get "staffed up and prepared" to be the star of a major Senate race, according to the Talking Points Memo blog.

"I don't think anybody would be prepared for a race like this where 20 or 30 million dollars is going to be spent in negative advertising,"said Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Cornyn spent a half hour with Angle on Tuesday, going over strategy of her bid to unseat Sen. Harry Reid. The former assemblywoman from Reno spent another hour with NRSC staffers, according to a committee spokesman.

Questions about Angle's readiness to campaign were prompted in part by her encounter (or non-encounter) with the Capitol press corps on Tuesday.

Following a lunch with Republican senators, she declined to take questions from reporters who followed her through Capitol corridors until she finally ducked into a waiting car outside the Senate.