The Sincere Revolutionary: Angle’s message assaulted
You said you wanted a revolution, but are you comfortable with the revolutionary?
That’s the question facing Republicans as they try to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in November. Their revolutionary, Sharron Angle, isn’t a squishy Republican or a cosmetically enhanced conservative. She’s a social conservative and a true believer. She knows her Constitution and has made clear her positions on the federal government. To put it politely, she’s not a fan.
Angle’s rhetoric is unlikely to play outside the American West, but then again she resides in Nevada, with its libertarian political streak and state Republican Party that appears to have fully embraced the national GOP’s hard-right conservative mantra.
Politically speaking, that’s where Angle lives.
Although she’s busy attempting to soften some of her previous rhetoric on using “Second Amendment remedies” to tame the federal government if the ballot box is unsuccessful -- talk about the definition of a sore loser -- to eliminating the Department of Education and Department of Energy and privatizing Social Security, Angle surely still holds those political beliefs.
They’re easy to lampoon, but they’re really just conservative Republican planks. Embattled Sen. John Ensign early in his career often spoke of privatizing Social Security and eliminating the Department of Education. It’s one of those stories Gingrich conservatives tell themselves and their constituents at bedtime.
Note that when the Republicans held both houses of Congress and the White House they didn’t rush to eliminate the Department of Education or drastically revamp Social Security.
Not that Angle is insincere. One thing the woman has always been is sincere about where she stands on the issues -- even when she’s standing to the right of her own party.
On Friday, The New York Times thought so much of Angle’s candidacy that it devoted an editorial to it. Not surprisingly, the Times views Angle as extremist in her rhetoric and positions. What it fails to say is that, give or take a few fiery one-liners, her rhetoric isn’t all that extreme by conservative Republican standards.
The Times: “ ’The nation is arming,’ she told The Reno Gazette-Journal. ’What are they arming for if it isn’t that they are so distrustful of their government? They’re afraid they’ll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways. That’s why I look at this as almost an imperative. If we don’t win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?’ The next step should be Ms. Angle’s explanation to Nevada voters of why she sees no harm in loosing such incendiary rhetoric. Pandering to gun ownership may be a political grail in Nevada politics, but this has crossed all acceptable lines.”� Crossed all acceptable lines?
Has the Times sent a reporter to the Tea Party rallies?
The GOP has been stoking Big Government fears for months in the run up to the midterm elections, taking full advantage of the Tea Party’s popularity in the press to drum up discontent and get out the vote.
Angle’s talk of revolution and dismantling Big Government is easy to vilify, but at least she’s sincere -- unlike the national bosses pulling the strings inside her party.
