Conservatism and Sharron Angle; or “Don’t Read This if You Think My Blowhard Liberal Rantings Will Offend You (though hopefully they’ll make you laugh)”

Conservatism and Sharron Angle; or “Don’t Read This if You Think My Blowhard Liberal Rantings Will Offend You (though hopefully they’ll make you laugh)”

I know some people get annoyed when I make so many political postings on Facebook, but I just can’t help it. It’s election season, we’ve got a lot of serious issues to contend with, and a lot of unserious candidates running for office. As soon as the election is over, I promise the posts will stop. Until then, the rants continue.

The 2010 election cycle has to be one of the most disturbing to witness since the 1950s saw us through McCarthyism, as a number of uninformed and seriously misguided – sometimes even batshit crazy – candidates are running for office. Since you all know my political viewpoints (to the left!), I think you know who I’m talking about: Rand Paul, Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck, Carl Paladino, Joe Miller, and my state’s very own Sharron Angle. It’s bad enough that we live in a political climate where an entertainer with no real-world experience outside of talk radio like Rush Limbaugh is heralded by many as an articulate political pundit, but he’s not running for office; these wing-nuts are, and they could very well end up representing YOU in Washington D.C.

I’m not an unbiased person, to be sure. I’m pretty liberal in my political viewpoints, but that doesn’t mean that I associate conservatism with idiocy or lunacy. If anything, conservatism is a philosophy that advocates keeping things the way they are as much as possible; experimenting with new ideas can sometimes be hazardous to a people and its government. I get that, and to various extents I’m a conservative person in my own life. The budget deficits that we’re facing right now call for an overhaul of the way budgets are made in Washington, and that most certainly means both spending cuts (especially in the bloated Dept. of Defense budget, arguably the most inefficient government bureaucracy) and tax increases. I would think that most conservatives realize that.

 But the list of people I just mentioned above are not conservatives, and they probably couldn’t define the term beyond anything but the normal platitudes you hear from them: limited government, less spending, less taxes, blah blah blah, etc. They have no idea that protecting the environment and preserving our nature’s heritage is a fundamentally conservative idea; they don’t understand that allowing gays and lesbians the right to marry is a conservative proposal, because it acts as a civilizing force for gays and lesbians -after all, aren’t the values of marriage that we want to preserve those of love, monogamy, and commitment?; they don’t understand that the separation of church and state is inherently a conservative principle (in addition to a constitutional one), as they both function better when they don’t have undue influences on the other; and they don’t understand that military adventurism is most certainly not a conservative value, as our republic was never intended nor designed to be an empire. Instead, their “conservative ideology” is anything but conservative. They seek to return the United States to the social model of the 1950s and the economic model of the 1900s. They abhor GLBT rights, they could give a damn about economic prosperity for all socioeconomic classes, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they believe Jesus is telling them to invade Cuba (or possibly Pennsylvania). They’re not conservatives, they’re just insane.

Sharron Angle

Speaking of insane, this little Teapot could quite possibly be the next United States Senator from Nevada. Polling is showing the race to be very tight, with Angle leading in 2 of the last 3 polls (but not by much). I see this race as a referendum not necessarily on Harry Reid, but rather on the state of democracy in the United States. There is a great deal of dislike towards Harry Reid, which I don’t personally understand. I’m not crazy about the guy, but he hasn’t done anything that warrants the kind of hostile reaction garnered from the Right. He’s the Senate Majority Leader, which means he’s the face of the Democratic Party in the Senate, which means he automatically becomes a pretty unpopular fellow. As soon as he took that mantle in 2007, he had to know that his re-election in 2010 would be tough because Senate leaders on both sides have tough re-election bids (Mitch McConnell had a close call in ’08, Tom Daschle lost his seat in 2004, and plenty of others declined to run again after leading their respective parties). That’s the price of leadership.

Even with all the angst towards Reid, the fact that the Republicans in Nevada nominated someone who is clearly in over head shows just how far our democratic capacities have dropped. Instead of nominating the best and the brightest, we’ve now got a match-up between an unpopular incumbent and Looney Tunes. And if you think I’m being hyperbolic in calling Sharron Angle crazy, or unqualified, or ill-tempered, or - oh hell, let’s go through the list right now and get it out of the way: crazy, lunatic, nuts, batshit crazy, scary, laughable, idiotic, repugnant, batshit crazy again, delusional, insane, or a crayon box short of a crayon box –, it’s worth repeating a great deal of what Mrs. Angle has said on the campaign trail thus far. Some of these clips and stories are real treasures:

1.       The media should ask questions that only candidates want to answer, and to report the news they want it to be reported..

2.       Social Security should ultimately be phased out, instead of fixed; another link here.

3.       High school football team uniforms that are all-black are satanic and “thoroughly evil”.

4.       She’ll peddle influence to other candidates if they drop out of the Senate race

5.       Not only is there is no separation of church and state, but religion should guide public policy.

6.       God wants her to become a Senator (this one I believe if the End of Days are actually upon us…also, this is on Pat Robertson’s TV show. Crazy reporting crazy.) Also, here’s another.

7.       Muslims are invading Michigan and Texas.

8.       Entitlements like unemployment insurance, social security, and Medicare have spoiled people.

9.       Rape and incest are not valid reasons to obtain an abortion…and I think she alludes to “God’s plan” having a part in such things…? Someone please clear that one up .

10.   Doesn’t discern the difference between gay marriage and repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and thinks that voters who approved gay marriage bans favor DADT (when most people don’t).

11.   Thinks Hispanics look Asian.

12.   Thinks she’s an Asian. (same video as above, towards the very end)

In a nutshell, she’s nuts. And voting for her makes you nutty. I’m not saying that she’s a bad person, or lacks character; don’t mistake this for a “character attack”. I’m not questioning whether she’s a good or person, BUT I am saying that she’s quite possibly certifiable. She has displayed a complete and utter lack of judgment and temperament, and in no way has a mentality that befits a position as important in a democracy as the one that she’s currently seeking (you can be a very pleasant and moral person and still be insane. I know this from being myself). I know a lot of people don’t like Harry Reid, for whatever reason. But how in good conscience can you vote for or support this candidate? I hate the idea of voting for someone because you’re voting against the other candidate, but that’s what this race has boiled down to. If you have sanity, if you have rationality, if you have any respect for what representative democracy means, you WON’T vote for Sharron Angle. Hell, we’d be better with “None of the Above” taking a plurality of votes instead of her. At least a vacant seat wouldn’t be occupied by someone creaming inarticulate ramblings from the Senate floor; it’s bad enough that I’m doing that from this blog!

 If you’re voting for her because she’ll be a reliable vote for the Republicans and will take a swipe at the Dems by ousting Reid and NOT because you think she’d make a good senator (does anyone believe that?), you are putting your party before your country. To my conservative Republican friends, you know she’d be a bad senator – many of you have gone so far as to explicitly tell me that, and that you’re voting for her only to depose Harry Reid. It’s an insult to the voters of Nevada that she became their nominee for US Senate. Likewise, it’ll be an insult to democracy if we vote her in on Nov. 2^nd.