An audiotape has just emerged on the website of the Las Vegas Sun, capturing Sharron Angle, the Tea Party/Republican candidate, in private conversation with a third-party spoiler candidate, Scott Ashjian:
You can listen to the audio here.
Some choice quotes:
The Republicans have lost their standards, they’ve lost their principles…..Really that’s why the machine in the Republican Party is fighting against me…..They have never really gone along with lower taxes and less government…
I believe you (Ashjian) can do some real harm, not to Harry Reid but to me…I’m not sure you can win and I’m not sure I can win if you’re hurting my chance and that’s the part that scares me…
(The Republicans in D.C.) don’t want me back there…because they know I’ll shake this mess up….…..I shook it up in Carson City, they hated me there…41-Angle was not a compliment……..When I go back, there may be five or six of us….maybe Joe Miller (Alaska), Ken Buck (Colorado), Christine O’Donnell (Delaware).
Duh — what’s not to like? If this is an attempt by the Sun to counteract its rival’s recent endorsement of Angle — and it is:
I can just hear it now [writes reporter Jon Rawlston]: The woman who calls the majority leader “Let’s Make a Deal Harry Reid” becomes “Let’s Make a Deal Sharron Angle.”– then it’s likely to backfire, big-time. For the tape shows that Angle is exactly what she says she is. As Ben Smith just noted on Politico:
The recording is worth listening to in full despite its poor quality. It suggests that — at least for the purposes of this conversation with a Tea Party figure — behind the facade of a real grassroots outsider who hates the organized Republican Party is … a real grassroots outsider who hates the organized Republican Party.
“The Republicans have lost their standard, they’ve lost their principle,” she tells Ashjian. “Really that’s why the machine in the Republican Party is fighting against me…. They have never really gone along with lower taxes and less government regulation.”
In opposing her, local Republicans are “coming out and showing their colors” she said. “That’s kind of good.”
Angle’s words may not have an immediate political impact, but they show what a profound challenge she and a handful of other Senate candidates pose to the Republican leadership, should they win. Angle’s view of herself is clearly of an insurgent, a subversive force within the GOP.That’s fine with us.
Meanwhile, let’s get this straight once and for all: an undercover audio is now a good thing as far as the MSM is concerned?
Thanks for clarifying the ground rules, fellas.
Big Journalism
