Getting the right Angle on Harry Reid's reelection challenge

Sharron Angle is dead, one in an occasional series.

The question cannot be ignored considering all that has happened since the primary: If Sharron Angle truly is as cuckoo as Harry Reid says she is and as her own words occasionally indicate, why isn’t the Senate majority leader, arguably the most powerful Nevadan in history, running away from her in the polls?

Although it’s possible Reid may continue to gain ground on Angle — he has gone from being down double digits to having slight leads in most surveys — the inexorable number in nearly every poll is the one that shows about half of the electorate disapproves of Reid. With 10 weeks until early voting begins, and with Reid hoarding enough money to unload all of the ammunition Angle has provided, it has become clear that either the majority leader can’t beat anyone this year or the GOP nominee is the only person he can survive.

At first glance, the prospect is startling: The most powerful man in Nevada, who controls the Democratic Party and is as canny as they come, could lose to a backbencher assemblywoman, who has no help from the party, who is on a mission from God, who thinks entitlements are extra-constitutional and who doesn’t think gays should adopt. I could go on with positions she has espoused, despite any current rhetorical mellowing, that generally are seen as out of the mainstream. But no need.

It’s almost preposterous, right? Sharron Angle defeating Harry Reid? Come on.

But here’s the rub: People hate Reid. I tell my daughter never to use that verb, but it’s the only word for it. It seethes, blinds, sputters.

I am asked all the time for the provenance of such animus. I still believe it is a combination: Anger at the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda that folks blame for their economic lot, Reid’s four decades in politics, his general mien and, of course, his intemperate remarks (war is lost, taxes are voluntary, tourists smell).

But it is profoundly irrational, too, much of the time, and thus impossible to change with a “She’s from Crazytown” campaign. And that’s what keeps the Reid folks up at night, knowing no matter how skillful they are — and he has the best campaign team Nevada has seen — the Reid-haters will not listen. They may be able to scare a small percentage to stay home or vote for “none of these candidates” — and that may be enough — but Team Reid can’t be sure, no matter what the next Angle revelation is.

In Nevada, even the dead are lashing out at Sen. Harry Reid

Election 2010 has just heard from a member of the Silent Majority.

You know, from a deceased person.

Chances are good you never met Charlotte McCourt during her 84 years, but I’m willing to bet you’ll be hearing about her in the coming days now that her obituary has taken Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to task. It’s the kind of small story that has the potential to ricochet like a bullet through the campaign showdown between incumbent Reid and Republican challenger Sharron Angle.

Not because McCourt, who died July 8 after a long illness, was a political player or business powerbroker, but precisely because she was neither of those things. She was a homemaker, proud mother and grand mother and wife of 67 years to Patrick McCourt.

And she was at one time a loyal supporter of Harry Reid.

Her obituary, printed in Tuesday’s Review-Journal, reads in part, “We believe that Mom would say she was mortified to have taken a large role in the election of Harry Reid to U.S. Congress. Let the record show Charlotte was displeased with his work. Please, in lieu of flowers, vote for another more worthy candidate.”

Ouch.

Republican Angle's lead over Harry Reid grows to 11 points

Sharron Angle, following her come-from-behind Republican Primary win Tuesday, has bounced to an 11-point lead over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada’s closely-watched U.S. Senate race.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Nevada, taken Wednesday night, shows Angle earning 50% support while Reid picks up 39% of the vote. Five percent (5%) like some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided.

A month ago, Angle led Reid 48% to 40% but ran poorest against the incumbent of the three GOP primary hopefuls as she has for months.

In Nevada, Tea Partier Sharron Angle will take on Sen. Harry Reid - the renegade outsider against the poster boy insider

Republican voters in Nevada on Tuesday nominated Sharron Angle to take on Democratic Sen. Harry Reid — something that was unimaginable just two months ago when Angle was polling in the single digits and having a hard time getting anybody to pay attention to her campaign. Then came the Tea Party Express (TPX).

Everything changed when the group, run by longtime Republican operatives in California, threw its weight behind Angle in Washington D.C. at a Tax Day conference heavily attended by the national media.

“When the Tea Party Express endorsed her, everybody took a second look,” said Larry Hart, a campaign consultant for Angle, in an interview with The Daily Caller. “And that changed the whole dynamic of the campaign. So, yes, they do get a lot of credit for giving her the credibility to really build her support up to where it is now.”

Angle defeated frontrunner and establishment choice Sue Lowden, Danny Tarkanian and a host of other Republicans Tuesday night. She will face Harry Reid — perhaps the most wanted of Democratic incumbents by Republicans this cycle — in November.

Though Angle’s campaign concedes TPX’s role in making her campaign, members of the Tea Party organization hesitate to take credit publicly.

“We didn’t create her,” said TPX’s Mark Williams, a conservative radio host, in an email to The Daily Caller. “Sharron was a one-person Tea Party before there was a Tea Party movement.”

Lowden 10 points up on Reid for Nevada Senate

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid must pick up far more support from crossover Republicans and independents to win re-election, according to a new poll that shows him losing to the GOP front-runner in a full-ballot election with eight contenders and a "none of these candidates" option.

The survey of Nevada voters commissioned by the Review-Journal shows Reid getting 37 percent of the vote compared with 47 percent for Republican Sue Lowden, who would win if the election were today, while the slate of third-party and nonpartisan candidates would get slim to no backing.

The latest Mason-Dixon poll for the first time measured Reid's and Lowden's support in a full general election test instead of in a head-to-head or three-way matchup to see how much of the vote the record number of Senate candidates on the Nov. 2 ballot would siphon off from the Democratic incumbent and the top GOP challenger, pollster Brad Coker said.

"The bottom line is that adding all these minor candidates won't really bleed support away exclusively from the Republican," Coker said. "They're not really bleeding much support from either candidate, Reid or Lowden, and if they do siphon off votes, it'll probably be about half and half."

Hey, Barack, here's a list of Dems you should hug

WASHINGTON -- During his whirlwind visit to Las Vegas two weeks ago, President Barack Obama mentioned U.S. Sen. Harry Reid by name four dozen times, gave him a big hug and talked him up as if he was a long-lost brother.

In remarks that could not have been more laudatory, Obama repeatedly characterized the veteran Democratic leader as a man "made of very strong stuff" who was making the right decisions for the state back in the nation's capital.

But as Reid faces an uphill path to win re-election to a fifth Senate term, Obama's enthusiastic endorsement does not appear to have improved the Senate majority leader's standing among constituents, according to a new poll conducted for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Reid got no bounce from Obama's visit on Feb. 19, when the president spoke highly of him at Green Valley High School and to business leaders at CityCenter, polling indicates.

A larger percentage of voters surveyed (17 percent) said they would be less likely to vote for Reid following the president's visit than said they would be more likely to vote for him (7 percent). Seventy-five percent said Obama's visit would have no effect on how they vote.

Sen. Harry Reid signals he's about to move right

ABC News: Sen. Reid bought Sen.Landrieu's vote on health care bill with $100 million medicaid subsidy

What does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for health care reform?

Here’s a case study.

On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”

The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”

I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing what could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)

Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.

How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.