Sharron Angle may want to stop talking.
In case you’re not sure who she is: Angle’s a tea party favorite running for Senate against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada. She beat out prohibitive favorite Sue Lowden in the Republican primary, mostly due to Lowden saying some ridiculous things. However, she also tends to say ridiculous things and get in trouble for them. As a result, she doesn’t get out much.
Earlier this week, she got riled up because the Reid campaign dug up her old website and, well, put it back online. I’m not an intellectual property expert—or even any kind if lawyer—but maybe somebody should have told her the first rule of the Internet: Anything you put on the Internet is going to be there forever.
Back in 2009, MGM Resorts was building CityCenter, a massive complex on the Las Vegas strip. The project experienced a number of financial woes and the entire was likely to fall through. Harry Reid, however, stepped in and kept the project alive, and in the process, saved 12,000 jobs.
Angle appeared on conservative host Alan Stock’s talk radio show, and she was asked if she would have done the same as Reid had done. Angle replied that she wouldn’t have. Why?
“It’s kind of like shifting the chairs on the Titanic,” she said. “You only shift jobs from one place to another, when we know that when we put those jobs at City Center, it was jobs that were taken away or business that was taken away from other areas. So, really it actually injured the economy of other businesses.”
In her mind, by saving the jobs, he was (somehow) taking jobs away from somewhere else (THEY TOOK OUR JERBS!). And, in doing so, (somehow) hurt the economy.
I’m not particularly sure why she said this. Maybe there is some part of her personal political philosophy that isn’t comfortable with a government figure saving a business or project, and she has to rationalize it somehow. Basically, all I can think of is that this is some kind of poor-man’s Karl Rove: Make your enemy’s strength his weakness. Really, go ahead and say how your rival saved 12,000 jobs. Say it with a frown, and maybe everybody else will frown too?
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, at least as of last week, has Nevada as a toss-up with Angle barely ahead. But that’s mostly because Harry Reid is extraordinarily unpopular. I just can’t imagine her (slight) lead will hold for much longer as long as she keeps talking.
Recent Comments