Sharron Angle vs. Saving jobs
Last week, Sharron Angle blasted Harry Reid for helping save thousands of jobs on the Las Vegas Strip.
Seriously.
Without using taxpayer dollars, Reid helped MGM Resorts' CityCenter -- the largest resort development project in American history -- avoid bankruptcy by encouraging financial institutions to continue extending the project the credit it needed to complete construction. Thanks in part to Reid's efforts, thousands of Nevadans work at CityCenter properties.
When a caller to a conservative talk show asked Angle if she'd have done what Reid did, Angle said she wouldn't have, explaining:
We know when they put those jobs at CityCenter, it was jobs that were taken away, business that was taken away from other areas, so it actually injured the economy of other businesses.
Leaving aside her poor grasp of the English language ("economy of other businesses"?) and her flawed zero-sum conception of economics, Angle's comments were a political disaster because they came as Reid was launching a new ad blasting her for saying "People ask me, what are you going to do to develop jobs in your state? Well that's not my job as a U.S. Senator."
Angle's new comments reinforced Reid's message that Sharron Angle is an ideologue trapped by her own right-wing dogma and seemed horribly out-of-touch coming from someone seeking to represent a state with a 14% unemployment rate.
On Friday, Angle went into damage control mode, telling a local TV reporter that the reason why shouldn't have helped CityCenter was that she opposed the stimulus bill.
What I said on the radio is that I would not have voted for the stimulus for the CityCenter. And the reason is because what happened there was Harry Reid rewarded some friends at the expense of other businesses.
Huh? Stimulus for the CityCenter? CityCenter didn't receive a dime in stimulus funds. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Reid's efforts on behalf of CityCenter. Nothing!
Yet here we have Sharron Angle saying she wouldn't have helped CityCenter because she opposed the stimulus. At best, this proves Sharron Angle is clueless -- assuming that she believes the words coming out of her mouth. At worst, she's a liar, deliberately trying to confuse the issue to get herself out of a political jam.
In either case, Harry Reid must be thanking his lucky stars, because while Nevada Republicans didn't make the mistake of nominating Sue "Chickens for Checkups" Lowden, they managed to find a candidate who was even worse. And that's an impressive feat.
Update: This afternoon on Fox, Angle took her craziness to a whole new level. Even Fox host Neil Cavuto appeared stunned by her lunacy.
The short version is that Sharron Angle is not only attacking Harry Reid for saving thousands of jobs on the Las Vegas Strip, she's effectively pledging that if she's elected to the U.S. Senate, she would never do anything that could help save jobs. Why wouldn't she do that? Because, she says, saving jobs is "like shifting the chairs on the deck of the Titanic."