Sharron Angle Is Happy the GOP Followed Her to Crazytown

She's baaaaack.Courtesy of <a>Dullard Mush<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MiGzkgtdfmw/SsTwm6B8DVI/AAAAAAAAAWs/x-UNlHABjlo/s1600-h/Sharron+Angle+Senate.JPG">

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Back in the heady tea party days of 2010, it seemed even a wet noodle could have beaten Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the beleaguered Senate majority leader and perennial butt of conservative jokes. But then the Republican Party nominated Sharron Angle, a maverickOath Keeper wanna-be” and anti-fluoride activist who stood up for BP, called unemployed Americans “spoiled,” and railed against “an unscientific hysteria over the man-caused global warming hoax.” Fox News laughed at her, she lost the race, and it seemed the GOP had finally found a heap of crazy that even they couldn’t carry.

But she’s back, baby. Ducking into a ladies’ room at the Republican convention in Tampa Wednesday, Las Vegas Sun reporter Karoun Demirjian ran headlong into a chipper Angle, who exulted in the party’s continuing embrace of her brand of crazy wisdom. Demirjian reports:

“In 2010, when I was running, everybody said ‘No, you’re too extreme,'” Angle said. “But now look, it’s where everybody is going.”

She mentioned specifically the push to audit the Fed, a rallying cry for the pro-Paul camp that they managed to get on the Republican platform last week. Angle had called for it in her 2010 campaign.

Beyond that, the new GOP platform also calls for the United States to study a return to the gold standard, and Angle has long advocated “making a basket of commodities (metals, oil, etc.) as a basis for maintaining the value of the U.S. currency”—call it the “gold, pork bellies, and frozen concentrated orange juice standard.”

Angle—a longtime Ron Paul sympathizer—supported Rick Santorum in the primaries and is a lukewarm Romney backer now, according to Demirjian. She was joined in the bathroom by two organizers of a group called Tea Party and Republicans Uniting Nevada Conservatives, and at this convention, it seems they’re realizing their dream of one party, under Sharron. Said one of the organizers: “She was ahead of her time.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate