A tea party that rivals Tim Burton’s view

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

Either Sharron Angle or Harry Reid is dead, one in an occasional series:

This was a tea party gone very wrong, with the Mad Hatter, as in Tim Burton’s film, suddenly the central character, and Alice, at once earnestly innocent and then surprisingly manipulative, having no idea how far down the rabbit hole she had fallen.

Jon Scott Ashjian is no Johnny Depp, but in the past 48 hours or so he has madly chewed more scenery than any movie star, transforming himself from a bit player to the lead in a Nevada Senate wonderland that Lewis Carroll could not have imagined. Angle, like Alice, has seemed almost lost, careening from one misadventure to another, topped off by the latest tale of the Tea Tape.

Oh, and that fellow with the Cheshire cat smile, watching from his perch far from the action, is a man with at least nine lives, first declared dead in 1974, then again in 1975 and 1998, and many times during this campaign. How can Harry Reid have been this lucky, to have the Republicans nominate a multifariously flawed candidate who is in a public spat with a political unknown who suddenly is basking in his Warholian fame and increasing the chances he could be a spoiler? Instead of accomplishing her goal of erasing Ashjian’s candidacy, by meeting with him Angle has elevated the Tea Party of Nevada candidate to a level he could not previously have achieved.

Reid may indeed be in the final stages of his last political life, ravaged by his four decades of baggage and the unpopular Democratic agenda. But if Angle loses this contest, and Ashjian gets more than 1 or 2 percent of the vote (and even that may be enough to save Reid), this little tea party may have a bitter aftertaste for the GOP.

They have the same initials, covet the same seat and (we think) have the same enemy. But Sharron Angle and Scott Ashjian, who will appear next to each other on the ballot, could not be more different. After the exposure of the Tea Tape, a national sensation from coast to coast, Ashjian will be seen by some as a reptilian opportunist, a consummate Vegas kind of guy who ignores long odds and tries to play all the, ahem, angles. But the tape also exposes Angle as a sincere dupe, a true believer in the outsider movement, albeit willing to work from the inside, who trusted a man everyone around her believed to be a con artist.

Indeed, Angle often seems as childlike as Alice, although some will suggest many of her utterances are not so benign — Second Amendment remedies being the most notable. The most interesting aspect of the taped conversation is what sounds like a subdued euphoria (did she, like Alice, take one of the pills to make her short or tall?) about her surprise nomination, giving her for the first time in a career on the fringe a chance to make the good old boys of the GOP genuflect to her. She has always reveled in her outsider status, but now she sees a door open and she cannot wait to go through it for the adventure on the other side.

Team Reid is its usual hyperventilating self over the candidate’s quite unAngle-like comments about what she will do once she gets into the ultimate good old boys club, promising access and juice. Why, that’s the kind of thing Harry Reid does all the time, isn’t it, Team Reid? Or at least that’s what Angle says he does and, frankly, what No One Can Do More Reid has been bragging about.

Truth is much of what Angle says on the tape is not surprising — her disdain for the GOP establishment, her criticism of Republicans for abandoning their principles. Perhaps her nonrabid supporters — the ones not shocked she isn’t such a purist, after all — should be thrilled she might be willing to play the game. Considering how ineffectual she was in Carson City, maybe this is a sign she could be effective if she actually manages to make it through the looking glass to that wondrous place known as Capitol Hill. Talk about climbing out of a deep, deep rabbit hole.

When Ashjian first came into the meeting, he charmingly yet unctuously told the diminutive Angle she is “taller than I expected.” On Nov. 2, we will know if he has helped cut her down to size or if Angle has enough juice to reach heretofore unimaginable heights.

Could that happen? As Grace Slick might have put it in her equally perverse retelling of Alice: Go ask Sharron when she’s 10 feet tall.