Angle learning to be U.S. Senate candidate: Stays on script, refuses questions, has entourage

Friday, July 16, 2010 | 2:48 p.m.

The choreography was something to behold:

Reporters were told the candidate would make a statement and take no questions. Folks from the group were recruited to hold the door open behind her so she could make a quick escape. Four operatives, including a videographer who trailed her though the event, were prepared to usher her out.

Was this a news conference in the Rose Garden? No, it was the new Sharron Angle at Lawry’s after a Women’s Chamber of Commerce event, giving a quick statement on adverse poll results and then scurrying out a door conveniently held open behind her to escape the Fourth Estate jackals.

This is the shape of things to come, folks. Maybe.

Angle was disciplined in her four-minute remarks and had that quartet of staffers there to make sure nothing went awry. It was as if she were….a U.S. senator. The press tightly controlled, no deviations from message, quick escape route.

Angle’s remarks for fairly tepid, as she held to a 4-minute time limit at the event. “We need a Nevadan, someone who is one of us…not someone who lives at the Ritz-Carlton….”

She stuck to her rephrasing of her “it’s not my job to create jobs” comment, which Team Reid has exploited, saying, “We the people are solution. We, who create jobs….Unless there is a climate created in Washington, DC….”

So it’s not her job to create jobs, just to create the climate in DC so jobs can be created. Get the distinction?

She then emphasized the usual shibboleths: Cut spending, cut the deficit, reduce the debt, less taxes and regulation.

She later, in response to a question, said businesses are “holding back” until they have confidence in the economy. She also mentioned the potential of “nuclear energy” to provide jobs at the test site.

Oh, and her statement on the RJ/Channel 8 poll that showed Harry Reid breaking out to a 7 percentage point lead:

“Polls are just a snapshot in time,” she began in the classic scripted retort. She then mentioned she was at 5 percent at one point during the primary – about this far from the election, in fact – and that she doesn’t “put a lot of stock in polls (especially ones that show her suddenly behind).”

When I tried to ask her a question, state GOP spokeswoman Ciara Matthews interceded and declared, “She’s not taking any questions today.”

Why? Tight schedule and all. Like a U.S. senator.

And then she was gone. Poof. Not like Keyser Soze, but effective, nonetheless.