Gun-packing Wacky Tea 'Bagger Wins GOP Primary to Go Up Against Harry Reid

Harry Reid's battle plan against Sharron Angle: Paint her as whackjob

Harry Reid's political operation in Nevada is quietly assembling a battle plan to take on Tea Partyer Sharron Angle in the general election, presuming she beats Sue Lowden in today's GOP primary.

The strategy: Use her own words to paint her as, well, a complete whackjob. Sound familiar? That's what ground up Lowden in the wake of the chickens-for-checkups gaffe.

Exhibit A: An interview Angle gave in which she suggested she favors outlawing alcohol and supports legislating morality. This, in Nevada.

In an interview with Liberty Watch magazine, Angle expressed her opposition to legalizing marijuana, and added: "I feel the same about legalizing alcohol."

"The effect on society is so great that I'm just not a real proponent of legalizing any drug or encouraging any drug abuse," Angle said. "I'm elected by the people to protect, and I think that law should protect."

Asked whether legislating morality is appropriate, she added: "I don't think you can get away from that; people just make value judgments. We're not a neutral society. Politics, especially, are not neutral and no one can come to the table value-less or moral-less."

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A gun rights defender, Angle sometimes packs a .44 Magnum revolver as she travels the state campaigning in her 1989 GMC pickup, and the locked gun cabinet in her Reno bedroom is full of rifles owned by a family of avid hunters.

"Whether I'm carrying or not is up to me to know and for the bad guys to find out," says Angle, who has a concealed weapons permit.

But these same conservative credentials that give her a loyal following among a select GOP group also raise doubts she can broaden her appeal enough to win the primary let alone the general election. Bring up her far right status and Angle's smile dims into a grimace, then a flash of temper.

"They always try to marginalize me, treat me like I don't exist," Angle complains of political analysts and mainstream Republicans even as the party shifts to the right in 2010. "They say, 'You're too conservative.' Was Thomas Jefferson too conservative? I'm tired of some people calling me wacky."

(NV-Sen) GOP Nominee Sharron Angle: “We Need a Joe Arpaio in Every State”

Nevada’s GOP primary has been among the wackiest races of the primary season, with Sue “The Chicken Lady” Lowden managing to flush a commanding lead of the three-candidate race via a stunningly lethal combination of poor judgment and political tone-deafness. Her “chickens for checkups” idea, wherein she suggested that needy citizens should consider bartering for health care, might not have been the death knell of her campaign had she kept insisting that her remarks were taken out of context instead of finding another issue to focus on.

So last night, the people of Nevada apparently opted for loony-tunes over politically obtuse in the GOP primary, as Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle rather handily defeated Lowden to win the nomination and go up against incumbent Democrat Harry Reid in November.

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I’ve added below a video from one of Angle’s recent stump speeches, but be sure to look at the transcript for any of the batshittier elements you may miss hearing...

Reid Opponent Embraces Patriot Group That Warns Of 'Giant Concentration Camps'

The peculiar ideology of Sharron Angle, the Republican nominee challenging Sen. Harry Reid in Nevada, is perhaps no better illustrated than by her embrace of the patriot group Oath Keepers, whose membership of uniformed soldiers and police take an oath to refuse orders they see as unconstitutional -- including enforcement of gun laws, violations of states' sovereignty, and "any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps."

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Harry Reid vs. the Oath Keeper Wanna-Be

Sharron Angle won yesterday's primary to become Nevada's Republican candidate for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's seat. She may have never advocated bartering for health care with chickens, as her opponent Sue Lowden did, but Angle already has some issues. Beyond embracing the Tea Party, she's also reached out to the Oath Keepers, the fringe patriot group whose core membership of cops and soldiers are gearing up to resist the Obama administration's anticipated slide toward outright tyranny.

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For the full scoop on the Oath Keepers and what they stand for, check out the in-depth investigation MoJo published about them this spring. In it, Justine Sharrock profiles Pvt. 1st Class Lee Pray, a young soldier who joined the group to prepare for the day when he might have to turn against his commander-in-chief to resist martial law and the mass detention of American citizens. (...)