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Published Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010 | 4:05 p.m.
Updated Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010 | 5:04 p.m.
As the circular firing squad continues in the wake of Sharron Angle's loss to Harry Reid, the true dysfunction of what went on inside the GOP nominee's campaign continues to amaze. I have already posted elsewhere on this blog an astounding ad that some locals produced but never aired.
But there's more from an Angle insider:
----Sen. John Ensign, who Reid has not laid a glove on since June 16, 2009, helped Angle prepare for the only debate on Oct. 14. Ensign played Reid during one day of debate preparation at the Trump Tower in Las Vegas. Hmmm -- I wonder if he gave Angle the "Man, up" line. Or if Reid will man up when Ensign runs for re-election....
----Late in the campaign, during a private meet and greet, Angle was asked about Social Security privatization. She had previously used Chile's Augusto Pinochet's experiment as an example, but had not used it since her staff shut her down. But that day, with no media there, saying her staff had warned her not to use it, she raised the Chile example again and added, "Sometimes dictators have good ideas." Her staff fretted the line would get out. It did not. Until now.
----Team Angle put campaign volunteers through a three-hour indoctrination. Included was an instruction of what to do if anyone came into the office who looked like a Democrat, a Reid supporter or a member of the media -- they all look alike! -- and that order was to dial a certain extension in front of the interloper and say, "It's time to water the plants." Sounds like Don Adams might have been on the other end of the line. You can't make this stuff up, folks.
----Finally, the political pros had their own handle for the local tea partiers who sometimes had Angle's ear. They took to calling them collectively: The Island of Misfit Toys. In case, you don't know the reference, it's from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a place where defective or unwanted toys are sent.
Yes, folks, this was the most important Senate race in the country.
Where is Mrs Ensign? Is she OK? Ensign is a mentally unstable individual in my opinion and one day we will pick-up the newspaper and see a new tragedy.
That is SO funny.
Sometimes dictators have a good idea, like making the trains run on time, too. Angle is just a pocket fascist.
Amazing!
Participatory democracy sounds like a great idea, until you see some of the participants.
Nevada Republican Party leadership, take note: this is who beat Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian. You folks need to get control of the situation before 2012, or you're going to have some talk radio expert on UFO activity debating John Ensign, and winning. Mark Amodei, I'm talking to YOU! If you're not actively recruiting, vetting, and preparing the next slate of Republican candidates, then you're going to see a dozen more Sharron Angles on the campaign trail, and some of them are going to be nominated.
You need to boot those teabagging squatters off your brand and send them over to Scott Ashjian, so you can nominate Republican candidates that don't end up talking about how hated they are by the Republican Party, while leading Republicans loudly announce their support for the opposing Democrat. If that nonsense happens again in 2012 when the Democrats don't have anyone named Reid on the ticket, you will suffer a blowout of epic proportions.
More vulgar name calling from our friends on the Left...
"teabagging squatters" How nice!!!
Comment removed by moderator. Name-calling.
Yeh, LarryV, I think gypc_dave might be a bona fide Republican expressing the sort of sentiment that a Raggio-type might have.
Anyhow ... these little factoids are not so incredible. Although it was a huge, and important race, the candidate opposing the incumbent was worse than a ham sandwich.
Land of Misfit Toys, indeed. So her staffers, knowing that Ms. Angle was from Misfit Toyland, thought that distancing her from her own kind would somehow convince the Toys-That-Were-Suitable-for-the-Good-Little-Girls-and-Boys that she was one of them? Fat chance!
Guess John can add one more broken promise to his ever-increasing list of sins: his promise to Harry Reid.
They may have held back that stupid comment Angle wanted to say but fret not because she made plenty of others tht made that one look sensible.
Ensign needs to go home and stay there and forget about a re-election. He's a sleaze bag and a hypocrite and as far as Reid touching Ensign why would he want to taint himself by doing so.
Angle and Ensign can eat their hearts out, Reid won.
Dysfunction inside the Angle "Cuckoo's nest"...
Thanks, Jon, for the high comedy!
There is a ratings bonanza in a "Crazy" Angle Movie Of The Week...
Carol Burnett as Sharron Angle, Teller as Ted Angle.
Angle, and the Teabaggers, show their true colors in using the fascist Pinochet as an example. Hell, he only overthrew a democratically elected president and presided over the murder of thousands of his own people...are these the kind of "good ideas" that Angle and the Teabaggers are interested in?
Even though Sharron Angle is a dangerous psychopath her 15 minutes of fame were very entertaining.
Ralston is right, before we start talking about another race we should fully expose why the GOP'S campaign was "dysfunctional" John Ralston did not even come close to exposing what and who caused dysfunction in the GOP campaign and if he believes his article will entomb the Angle -- Harry Reid race for eternity he is mistaken. I mean if someone had carefully documented, dates, times, names, and circumstances, they could write a book(!)
I was worried Ms. Angle would get elected, but it wouldn't be a "Harry Reid vs. Who Ever" race if there wasn't drama right up to the end. My biggest consolation was knowing that if the polls were right (or should I say real) and Ms. Angle did win, it wouldn't be long before she was up on ethics charges, shunned by the GOP or both.
I've understood all along why she never spoke to the press... or in public for that matter. She and her handlers knew that she was her own worst enemy. All she needed to do was to open her mouth and stupid poured out. Stupid or just plain creepy, I guess it just depended on her mood at the time.
I'm not trying to say Senator Reid hasn't had his share of "Foot-in-Mouth" disease, but Ms. Angle was constantly putting her foot so far down her throat she was able to sit down up and stand up at the same time.
I'm also very disappointed with Sen. Ensign. Was he thinking that Senator Angle would help him with those pesky ethics charges against him? Has he decided it's time to end the truce that he and Sen. Reid had agreed on and have stuck to for more than 4 years? Or was he just thinking, well... you know what they say about crazy chicks...
Hey Ralston, your boy won. The Union thugs worked... Put away the muzzle and go find some real news stories. you know, like what real journalists used to do...
Good job Jon.......
The crazy teabaggers found out that there are
too many Democrats in Nevada, for them to have
a chance.
Next stop, 2012.
RALSTON----"Finally, the political pros had their own handle for the local tea partiers who sometimes had Angle's ear. They took to calling them collectively: The Island of Misfit Toys. In case, you don't know the reference, it's from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a place where defective or unwanted toys are sent"
ANSWER-----If you remember Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
ended up LEADING the pak of "Elitest" reindeer because they could not see where they needed to go
@Mark - union thugs my ***. Harry Reid won because of three main reasons: 1) - the genius that was his field operation, 2): the thousands of very willing volunteers who worked on his behalf, and 3): every word that came out of Sharron Angle's mouth.
All what Sharron did, didn't work but she is insane, so she will keep trying the same old tactics, hoping for a different result.
Sharron Angle's campaign manager made one huge mistake that eventually would cost Sharron the election. That mistake was hiring a cadre of youthful, "professional," campaign staffers recommended by National Republican Senatorial Committee operatives. That's because it should have been obvious for all to see that throughout this past election cycle, the NRSC was committed to sabotaging so-called Tea Party, or non-establishment (true conservative), candidates that won Republican primaries throughout the country.
At the same time the NRSC was fighting Joe Miller in Alaska (in favor of Murkowski) and demeaning Christine O'Donnell in Delaware (in order to help Charlie Crist), one has to wonder why Angle's campaign manager thought his NRSC recommended "professionals," were actually here "to help" Sharron Angle? He must have forgotten that the NRSC supported Sue Lowden during the Nevada Primary race and that Sue frequently warned voters during that race that Sharron couldn't win the general election.
Angle's campaign manager also mistakenly hired the NRSC's anointed advertising buddies and these folks, likely at the insistence of the NRSC, produced many ads that wound up not helping Angle. Additionally, all the ads I viewed only attacked Reid, never refuted any of Reid's false attack ads and never, ever promoted the stellar, pro constitutional legislative record that Angle recorded as a Nevada Assemblywoman.
The bottom line, Jon, is that the half-dozen inhabitants of "The Island of Misfit Toys" defeated two significantly better financed candidates in the Republican Primary but the NRSC "professionals" couldn't defeat a man with 52% negatives but I guess that's because they were under orders from their superiors at NRSC headquarters to do everything they could to help Reid beat a candidate that they knew they couldn't control if she made it to D.C.
Good points by Hangtown. I think the Reps probably preferred to keep Harry around, especially if the alternative meant having Angle in their midst. Reid (like Pelosi and Obama) is a nice boogie man to sell to the public, and he would in no way push forward (and powerfully articulate) the kind of aggressive agenda Sens Durbin and Schumer would.
In reviewing her campaign, Angle's commercials may have cemented her base, but they did nothing to encourage the thousands of swing voters just hoping for a reason to remove Reid. You really have to wonder who decided to take the communications route she did.
Why she didn't air a commercial featuring highlights of Obama's two statements telling people not to come to Vegas, baffled me. If I ran her campaign, I'd have just produced that single commercial and aired it all day long. Just the simple message (Obama hates Nevada, Harry's done nothing about it, and it's killing our economy), pounded over and over, would have been better than images of sneaking immigrants, etc.
Jon, I was a nearly full-time volunteer for the Angle campaign, and your above assertions concerning the "It's time to water the plants" code, and tea partiers being referred to as The Island of Misfit Toys are 100% false. Now that uncorroborated innuendo is reported as fact, "journalism" is so deep in the toilet it may never again see the light. Garbage like this contributes to its death.
Hangtown1--YOUR ASSESSMENT IS CORRECT. The NRSC purposefully derailed her, and why she didn't have the foresight and wherewithal to send them packing will forever be a mystery. A scintilla of competence at the top and she wins.
Halvorson, you are so right about "Journalisim" at least here in Vegas, being in the toilet! Ralston, Muth, and even Casey Hendricks are reporting this innuendo as fact. If they wanted the real story they whould start with the NRSC and the "DC professionals" corroboration.