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The Real Reason Sharron Angle Lost

It's the curse of the Mama Grizzly.

Read Slate's complete coverage of the 2010 midterm elections.

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This contradiction exposed why it's so critical to the fundamentalist worldview that women stay at home and abandon ambition. In this world, women are supposed to be the light, the caretakers, the homemakers, those who smooth feathers and wipe brows. Aggression, meanness, ambition, and even lustiness are considered more masculine traits, even by the public at large. As Dave Weigel reports, the Republicans are beginning to feel that Sharron Angle, at least, spent too much time in the public eye. The longer the public stares at a Mama Grizzly, the more painful the contradiction between her ideals of femininity and her actual behavior.

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Amanda Marcotte is a journalist, opinion writer, and author of two books on progressive politics. She originally hails from Texas, but now lives with all the other internet writers in Brooklyn.

Photograph of Sharron Angle by David Becker/Getty Images.