'Tea party' favorite Sharron Angle takes aim at Harry Reid

In his uphill race to hold onto his seat as Senate Majority Leader, the best thing beleaguered Harry Reid has going for him seems to be his Republican opponent.

Sharron Angle is a favorite of the burgeoning “tea party” movement. But she brings with her fight to enter the political big time a set of controversial positions, statements, and affiliations that GOP leaders are having to scrub, explain, or make excuses for.

Still, a Rasmussen Reports poll of likely Nevada voters last week had Angle ahead of Reid by a substantial 50-39 percent – as much a reflection of Reid’s unpopularity as a four-term Washington insider as anything else.

Reid, quite naturally, is keeping the focus as much as possible on Angle.

“She may be the only Republican alive Harry Reid can beat,” Eric Herzik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada-Reno, told the Associated Press.

Take her recent comments on “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” the powerful gun lobby and its millions of supporters’ favorite amendment to the US Constitution.

Citing Thomas Jefferson’s notion about the periodic need for revolution, Angle told conservative talk radio host Lars Larson: “If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.” She’s said essentially the same thing in other venues.

Whether or not Angle is actually suggesting armed opposition to political opponents, she’s also associated herself with some of the tenets of the “Oath Keepers,” a controversial group that claims a membership of law enforcement officers and active duty military personnel ready to disobey any “orders to disarm the American people” (among other things).

1 | 2

Next