Meet the “so extreme,” “far-right conservative” Sharron Angle, who won the Nevada Senate primary on Tuesday and will face Democrat Harry Reid in the fall. Those quotes aren’t from Daily Kos or even a New York Times columnist, but from two of the Times’s political reporters, Jennifer Steinhauer and Jackie Calmes. (This post is based on two items previously posted on Times Watch .) Reporter Jennifer Steinhauer first took aim at Sharron Angle in Thursday’s ” Results of Nevada Primary Set Up Senate Race of Sharp Contrasts .” Notice a pattern in Steinhauer’s labeling? Further, Ms. Angle — the Tea Party-blessed candidate who bested her two better-financed competitors in Tuesday’s primary — is an untested statewide candidate whose positions as a lawmaker put her firmly to the right of most mainstream Nevada voters . The hot lights of national exposure can be a liability for new — and overly loquacious — candidates, as Rand Paul, the Republican Senate nominee from Kentucky, quickly found. …. Among her detractors and her supporters she is known as a far-right conservative and a thorn in the side of both parties, routinely voting no on almost everything that came before the Legislature. She is also a tireless campaigner. When a 2002 redistricting forced her to face off with a wildly popular Republican incumbent, Greg Brower, she went door to door nightly, won and ended his political career. The Times rarely if ever identifies Democratic candidates as far-left. Also on Thursday, Washington-based reporter Jackie Calmes twice called Angle “extreme” in a Times ” Political Points ” podcast, available at nytimes.com. Here’s Calmes telling host Sam Roberts about the primary elections, about 16 minutes from the end: The interesting thing about the number of women we had in here is that so many of them were Republican. But I guess that’s not so surprising when you think that of all the candidates out there in some very crowded fields, most of it’s on the Republican side because they see a chance here where they didn’t in the last two election cycles to really get elected. It’s a Republican year, it stands to be. But on the other hand some of these women are, like in Nevada, against Harry Reid, Sharron Angle has, she’s a Tea Party candidate who’s given Democrats renewed hope of saving Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, from what was looking to be near certain defeat, because she is so extreme . So much so that some of the Republicans in the immediate aftermath have started distancing themselves from her. Calmes again, 12 minutes 40 seconds from the end: The Democrats generally at first blush on Wednesday morning when the results were in were happy that both Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, looks newly secure because the Nevada Republicans had nominated such an extreme, Tea Party-type member ; and that Blanche Lincoln had survived against an insurgent rival backed by the party’s left.
Originally posted here:
Two NYT Reporters Tar Nevada GOP Candidate Sharron Angle: "Far-Right," "Extreme"
