Memo To Sharron Angle

Dear Sharron:

As we head down the home stretch, I have only one bit of advice.

Don’t stop being Sharron.

What Harry Reid and the lamestream media calls “extreme” or “too extreme” is pretty much mainstream thinking here in Nevada and when you sit in a TV studio across from his eminence on October 14, you will have the opportunity to call him out on just that topic.

What is “extreme” about a strong belief in God?

What is “extreme” about a firm belief that life begins at conception?

What is “extreme” about the concept that which governs least governs best?

I heard Mort Kondrache on Fox say that you are “nuts”.  He said that his litmus test for “nuts” was anybody who wants to abolish the Department of Education.

Well, now.

The Department of Education was spun off from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1981.  And what has happened to test scores in the intervening 29 years?

We’ll let Harry Reid’s people look that up using Google—if they know how.

As a matter of history, education did not become a Federal priority until the Russians launched Sputnik before we got a satellite in space.  If the Federal Government had stuck to providing funding for science education, we probably would not be talking about this today.  But the federal presence in Education has become so large and omnipresent that its necessity is a very legitimate question—unless you happen to belong to a public employees union.

And, what’s extreme about the idea of shrinking government and lowering taxes?

I know that the Reid sycophants like to talk about those 41 to Angle votes in the state legislature.

But the fact is that “no” is a principled position—and in hindsight, you happened to be right most of the time.

So don’t listen to those people who would have you “soften” a position here and maybe “tweak” a position there.

That’s not why you won the primary.

You won on June 8 because you were Sharron Angle and you stuck to your guns.

If you keep sticking to your guns, you may well be part of the nightmare for the DC Establishment when there are 10 Senators who can bring the Senate to its knees.

Some years ago, when Pat Choate was Ross Perot’s VP candidate in 1996, I remember Pat, I and a few others were having one of those late night after an event winding down conversations and it dawned on us that we might be doing the wrong thing.

Maybe, instead of a third-party run for President, we should have used our resources to go after 10 Senate seats and 25 House seats.

Because, the way those institutions work, you can hijack the process with a surprisingly small rump group.

What we talked about 14-years ago may well be happening in practice today.

If, indeed, that is the case, Sharron Angle is poised to be one of the people who leads the American people out of the wilderness and towards the center-right position they have self-identified with for years.

But if you want to get there, you need to keep on being Sharron Angle.

FRED WEINBERG