Sharron Angle Left Far-Right Third Party For Electoral Expedience, Members Say
The key to understanding Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle may be the fact that she has not always been a Republican.
For at least six years in the 1990s before she held state-level elective office, Angle was a member of the little-known Independent American Party, a right-wing party that combines elements of Ron Paul's doctrinaire libertarianism -- pro-gun, anti-tax, anti-bureaucracy, pro-states' rights -- with Christian social conservatism and fear of the "North American Union" and other forms of "global government." The small party attracted considerable controversy in 1994 when it took out a newspaper ad titled "Consequences of Sodomy: Ruin of a Nation," which suggested HIV could spread through the water.
Three members of the Independent American Party tell TPM that Angle, a Nye County, Nevada, school board member at the time, was an active member of the party in the 1990s. They say she only left the Independent American Party and became a Republican out of political expediency when she decided to seek a seat in the state assembly, to which she was elected in 1998.
Sharron Angle Adds Insult To Injury With New Racially-Tinged Immigration Ad
Last week, I reported that Sharron Angle’s (R) own spokesperson slammed the Nevada senatorial candidate’s vicious immigration ad which fallaciously portrayed opponent Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) as being the “best friend an illegal alien ever had.” The racial overtones of the ad were so offensive that chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Hispanic Caucus and Angle spokesperson, Tibi Ellis, stated “I condemned this type of propaganda, no matter who is running them, where they blame Mexicans as the only problem and where they attack them as the only source of illegal immigration.”
Ellis may have an even bigger problem with Angle’s latest racially-tinged ad which goes after Reid and his support of undocumented students. The ad includes the offensive footage of menacing men with flashlights walking along a fence that was featured in her first ad. However, it also adds new images of scowling Latino men as the narrator proclaims, “and now Harry Reid is fighting for a program that would give preferred college tuition rates to none other than illegal aliens.” The image is juxtaposed against a photo of white college graduates in their graduation robes. At the end, the narrator asks, “What does Harry Reid have against you?”
Watch it:
The ad appears to be vaguely referencing the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act which Reid attached to the defense reauthorization bill last month as an amendment. The DREAM Act wouldn’t give undocumented students special tuition rates, but it would eliminate a federal provision that penalizes states that provide in-state tuition without regard to immigration status. Angle’s ad doesn’t mention that it would also allow certain undocumented immigrant youth who were brought to the U.S. by their parents at a young age to eventually obtain legal permanent status by enlisting in the military or attending a university. A June 2010 national poll of 1,008 adults revealed that 70 percent of voters support the DREAM Act, across party lines.
Reid’s campaign released a fact check and a statement on the ad saying, “despicably, Angle’s new ad ramps up her use of incendiary imagery to appeal to Nevadans’ worst fears, while using the exact same thoroughly-debunked lies from her first two ads – lies that independent analysts and fact-checkers have called out as false.”
Angle isn’t the only Republican candidate to employ offensive images that reinforce negative anti-Latino stereotypes. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) used the same exact photo in one of his own attack ads
Sharron Angle Is Against Abortion In Cases Of Rape Or Incest: It Would Interfere With God’s ‘Plan’
Sharron Angle wants to phase out Medicare and Social Security
She even took the extreme position that women should not have control over their reproductive rights in cases of rape or incest, because it would interfere with God’s “plan” for them:
Nevada Republican U.S. Senate nominee Sharron Angle made many extremist statements during her primary campaign, and some of the most egregious involve her goal to eliminate Social Security and Medicare and privatize those two vital senior safety nets.
During a May 2010 debate on the public affairs show “Face to Face with John Ralston” Angle said, “We need to phase Medicare and Social Security out in favor of something privatized.” She repeated these views around the state.
Now that she must appeal to a much broader and far less extreme electorate than the right-wing Republican base in her race against Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D), Angle has become much less vocal about her plans to eliminate Social Security and Medicare.
