OK, if you you’ve got joy, joy, joy, joy down in your heart that Sharron Angle decided to run for the United States Senate again this year, well, you probably ought to just stop reading RIGHT NOW.
Angle is Nevada’s Mitt Romney. As Donald Trump would put it, she’s a “choker.” And once a choker, always a choker.
Angle was — as many of us knew — the ONLY candidate who could have possibly lost in 2010 to Sen. Harry Reid, perhaps the GOP’s most reviled Democrat in office at the time.
Indeed, Angle ran one of the worst campaigns in the history of the world in one of the most conservative-friendly election cycles in the history of the republic. Nobody “stole” the race from her. She gave it away.
For many of us, though, it came as no surprise. Indeed, Angle’s only election victories came over a dozen years ago in a tiny state assembly district with a “yuge” Republican registration majority. Big whoop.
She then ran for Congress in a GOP primary against populist Republican Dean Heller and others in 2006. Some 24,000 Republicans voted for her - while some 44,000 Republicans voted against her.
She blew it. She choked. She lost.
She then ran against the late State Sen. Bill Raggio in the 2008 Republican primary. Raggio was a tax-hiking, government-growing moderate who was ripe for the picking. It should have been a slam dunk for Angle.
She blew it. She choked. She lost.
Then came the 2010 Reid debacle. She had her shot. She blew it. She choked. She lost.
Now, like a bad case of herpes, she’s back; throwing her hat in the ring to challenge Republican Congressman Joe Heck in this year’s GOP U.S. Senate primary.
And for what?
For pure ego, that’s what. Because it sure isn’t for the good of the conservative movement, the Republican Party or the state of Nevada.
Now, does Rep. Heck have a voting record as conservative as I’d like? Frankly…no.
But you have understand that he’s been representing a Democrat-majority district. And that he’s now running in a Democrat-majority state. Heck is, as they say, the most conservative candidate who can WIN.
And Nevada is the only Senate race this year where Republicans have a realistic chance to pick up a Democrat seat. In fact, Nevada’s Senate race might very well determine whether Republicans or Democrats control the Senate next year when that Supreme Court vacancy finally gets filled.
The bottom line is that Angle has ZERO chance of beating Heck in the primary. So the only thing Angle can do is to bloody Heck up and radicalize some conservatives into voting against him in what will surely be a nail-biting, barn-burner race against Reid’s hand-picked Democrat successor in November, Catherine Cortez Masto-Reid.
The only good that can come of Angle’s candidacy this year is the possibility that it’ll finally be the stake that’s driven through her self-serving, misguided political heart.
Thank goodness for silver linings.
Chuck Muth is publisher of www.NevadaNewsandViews.com. You can read additional columns and/or contact him at www.MuthsTruths.com