No matter how hard Sharron Angle tries, she can't shake the fact of her radical associations and ideas away so easily.
In her own words:
"If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are going to start looking for second amendment remedies..."
Which she then follows up with this:
"The first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out."
In the span of about a minute or so, Angle advocates for armed insurrection, 'taking out' a duly elected Senator of the United States, and curing Congress' problems with a 'Second Amendment solution'.
Would this be before or after she repeals Social Security, ends unemployment insurance, outlaws alcohol and terminates Medicare? I suppose she would say it's just one of those oaths she keeps, right? Because she's not an Oath Keeper, but a 'keeper of oaths'. So that's how they do that.
Also, let's not forget about her long association with the Independent Right Party, a group so far fringe most of us haven't peeked far enough under the covers to look at them, but we probably should, since they seem to have written some of the current right-wing dialogue:
Hansen's brother, the late Daniel Hansen, founded the Independent American Party in 1967 "after realizing that the Republican Party was growing too corrupt and socialistic," according to the party website. The party lost its ballot position in the late 1970s and didn't get back on until a push by Hansen in 1992. That year, Angle signed the petition to get the Independent American Party back on the ballot, according to multiple party members and news reports.
That was a heady time for the reborn party. A 1992 Los Angeles Times article (via Nexis) describes Hansen at a political rally wearing a Stetson hat and bearing a sign that read, "If Guns Are Outlawed, How Can We Shoot the Liberals?" His rhetoric would not be out of place at a 2010 tea party.
"Don't give up your guns, folks," he told a crowd. "That's all we've got to protect us against the advance of socialism. America is in a survival phase." (via TalkingPointsMemo)
I don't think even Frank Luntz can fix this one.
Cartoon Credit: Danziger Cartoons
