The XX Factor

Sharron Angle: Mainstream?

Labor Day weekend is over, and your average voters are only starting to wake up and pay attention to the election. Which means that everyone’s favorite parrot candidate, Sharron Angle, is hoping that by carefully repeating what her advisers tell her that her strategy should be, she can convince the voters of Nevada that she’s not a hard-line right-winger.  Sadly for her, Angle hasn’t learned how to put that neat little spin on what her advisers tell her that makes it sound like she thought of it herself.

For instance, Angle has taken to plainly stating that she’s going to be a mainstream senator .  However, one could be forgiven for suspecting that Angle is a little confused about what the term “mainstream” might mean.  The Republican victory plan for Sharron Angle seems to go as folllows: Her advisers suggest she needs to come across as mainstream, she tells the press that she’s mainstream, and I suppose the next step is to expect the press to take this evidence-free assertion on faith. The press seems unwilling to play along with this brilliant plan.  Instead, they keep reporting on the nutty stuff Angle says and does, such as agreeing with the contention that there are a bunch of “domestic enemies” and “homegrown enemies” sitting in Congress.

Given a candidate that is supposed to come across as mainstream but has no idea what mainstream is, the campaign advisers appear to have a back-up plan: claim that everyone’s picking on Sharron by taking her words out of context .

“As you speak, as we’re conversationally speaking, sometimes when you pick out words, they’re not the best words you could have used,” she told CNN in a rare one-on-one interview. “When taken out of context, you can make anybody look like they don’t know what they’re talking about,” she said.

Again, it’s hard to shake the feeling that complaints about being taken out of context are really complaints about not being able to say any fool thing you want on right-wing talk radio without it being covered in the mainstream press.  Maybe Sarah Palin should fly down and give Angle some pointers on fronting like your First Amendment rights are being violated if someone quotes you directly to criticize public statements you made.