Bonanza Column 200 – Nevada Can’t Afford Sharron Angle

There's an old expression – "yellow dog Democrat" - to describe a voter who is such a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat that he or she would sooner vote for a yellow dog than for a Republican. I'm not sure what the equivalent expression is on the GOP side, but whatever it is it seems to me you would have to be one to be supporting Sharron Angle at this point.

I understand that, particularly for Republicans outside Nevada, unseating Harry Reid is a priority, although given its highly unlikely that the GOP will gain a majority in the Senate, all that would mean is that Reid would be replaced as Majority Leader by another Democrat. Still, Reid has been very effective as ML and I can see that the GOP would want to get him out of there. That's why the national GOP has taken over Angle's campaign and is trying to tone down her crazy rhetoric, though they haven't been very successful.

For us in Nevada, however, there are overriding considerations. Republican talking points to the contrary, Reid has done a lot for Nevada – his national leadership has not detracted from his representation of the state. Pick your issue – jobs (see 22,000 jobs at City Center in Las Vegas), Yucca Mountain, veterans' issues, energy policy – Reid's influence has benefited the state, and while statistics can be bent to argue any way you want them to, the facts are the facts. To lose Reid, as I've said repeatedly, would be a big loss for Nevada. To trade him for Angle would be a tragedy.

In Angle's seven years in the 42-member state assembly, she voted "no" so frequently on matters of wide consensus that votes were often called as "41-to-Angle". Given that she will fit right in with the far right of the GOP whose stated strategy for the next two years is to oppose everything the government tries to do. While she has backtracked on some of her earlier positions, it is a documented fact that Angle has favored preventing women who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest from having abortions. elimination of publicly-funded Social Security and Medicare, elimination of the Department of Education, the institution of programs in schools and prisons that seem to be Scientology-based, and has said quite recently that the US Constitution violates the first of the Ten Commandments, since it seeks have government act in place of God.

Angle says in one of her TV ads that government is the problem, not the solution. Given that statement, I have to wonder why she and her ilk want so badly to be part of the problem. When I was politically active in the 60's we talked about "working within the system to destroy it" as opposed to opposing the system from outside it. Many of my colleagues at that time tried that and were invariably unsuccessful, usually becoming part of the system they intended to undermine. If I combine Angle's extreme positions, her record of "just say no" voting, and her repeated attempts to become part of the government she is so opposed to, I'm left with the conclusion that she wants to go to Washington to try to bring down the government from within. In this I doubt she'll be any more effective than my friends were.

Right now Nevada is represented by one of the most politically astute and powerful people in America and by a junior senator who has shown himself to be ineffective and ethically challenged, and who may soon be under criminal indictment. If Angle and her politically myopic supporters succeed, we will be represented by a senior who has shown himself to be ineffective and ethically challenged, and who may soon be under criminal indictment and a junior senator whose stated position is that government is the problem. I don't care how loyal a Republican you are, Nevada cannot afford Sharon Angle in so many ways.