Sharron Angle still taking cash raised by ostracized Tea Party leader?
As you know, the Tea Party Express is under fire because its leader, Mark Williams, recently posted a satirical letter from "the Colored People" to President Lincoln praising slavery. The ensuing controversy got the group expelled from the Tea Party Federation, and the group continues to get pummeled by critics on all sides.
But there's one person who still has not disowned the Tea Party Express: Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle.
And she may even be taking their fundraising dollars, too: I can't get the Angle campaign to tell me whether they will continue taking money that the Tea Party Express is raising for her effort to topple Harry Reid.
To be fair, the Angle campaign did condemn the Tea Party Express leader's remarks -- sort of. After the story broke, the Angle campaign sent me and other reporters a statement claiming that she "denounces" such "inflammatory language."
But her statement also made it clear that she isn't disavowing the group at all. It said the statement of "one person" should not "represent the attitude of the hundreds of thousands of citizens" who make up the Tea Party movement.
What's more, the Tea Party Express continues to prominently raise money for Angle on the front page of its Web site. And the campaign won't tell me whether she'll refrain from taking money raised for her by this group. I asked a campaign spokesperson several days ago whether she would, and I still haven't received a reply.
The Tea Party Express was instrumental in enabling Angle's rise from obscurity during the Nevada GOP primary. And one Tea Party group is calling on candidates like Angle to completely disavow the support the Tea Party Express.
So it's fair to ask whether Angle is really going to continue to accept campaign funds raised by the group in the wake of the "satirical" Lincoln letter. If I ever get an answer, I'll update you.