Is Sharron Angle really a crazy right-winger?

Sharron Angle dispatched a couple of fellow Republicans last night in Nevada and earned the Dragon Slayer merit badge in her quest to oust Harry Reid in November. The MSM immediately went to work helping Reid seize the narrative painting Angle as some sort of circus-freak radical. As Clyde Middleton noted, the “loopy girl” meme is in full-swing.

Geoffrey Dickens at Newsbusters provides a sample.

On Wednesday’s Today show NBC’s Matt Lauer, Chuck Todd and Kelly O’Donnell forwarded the Democratic line that Tea Party candidate victories in Republican primaries will be the GOP’s downfall in November. First up Kelly O’Donnell, in a set up piece, claimed: “In Nevada, a big Tea Party victory in the GOP Senate primary…But Democrats are actually cheering Sharron Angle’s win, believing that a Tea Party candidate would be an easier opponent” for Majority Leader Harry Reid. Then, during a post-election analysis segment with Today co-anchor Matt Lauer and NBC News’ political director Chuck Todd, Lauer wondered if the Angle win meant “Democrats have a right to be optimistic” as Todd chimed in that since Angle was “a little too conservative…to appeal to independents potentially” there is now a “path to victory” for Reid.

Then, this morning, Washington Post writer Paul Kane, posing as a political strategist, broke out the thesaurus and grabbed every synonym for “radical” he could find. After all, nobody likes a radical. Especially radically radical radicals like Sharron Angle.

Noting that she is a “staunch” and “strident” tea party fueled conservative, Kane regurgitates five Harry Reid talking-points. We can assume this will be the focus of Reid’s attack (the fax probably arrived 2 minutes after the race was called), so let’s see how much of a winger she really is.

Inflammatory rhetoric: In an interview last month with the Reno Gazette-Journal, Angle had this to say about gun laws: “What is a little bit disconcerting and concerning is the inability for sporting goods stores to keep ammunition in stock,” she told the newspaper. “That tells me the nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn’t that they are so distrustful of their government? They’re afraid they’ll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways. That’s why I look at this as almost an imperative. If we don’t win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?”

Given that President Obama supports a ban on handguns and the Democrats have introduced federal legislation that would require all gun owners to register all their guns with the Attorney General, is it any wonder why gun and ammo sales have reached record highs? After all, the 2nd Amendment was written to prevent the government from disarming the people. That whole 2nd Amendment thing is so darn inflammatory.

Abolishing wide swaths of the federal government: Angle believes the U.S. Education Department should be abolished, as she explains on her campaign Web site: “Sharron Angle believes that the Federal Department of Education should be eliminated. The Department of Education is unconstitutional and should not be involved in education, at any level.” Angle went further in an interview with a Nevada online publication, writing that she favored the termination of the Energy Department, the EPA and much of the IRS tax code; complete elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Hmmm, I seem to recall another president who also favored abolishing the Education and Energy Departments. That guy was so ultra-conservative that he won two terms by landslides. Lots of people would gladly support abolishing the rest of the useless trash on that list as well.

Kane goes on to say that Angle’s positions on keeping Yucca Mountain open and her bitter clinging to God and guns are really too fringey. Of course, completely sane people might want to have a place to store nuclear material. And a little trip down memory lane might refresh Reid’s recollection that the bitter clinger thing has been tried before and Obama lost Pennsylvania to Hillary by 9 points).

Finally, Angle really hates the U.N. and wants the United States out.

Angle has called for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations. Again, from her campaign Web site: “The UN. has been captured by the far left and has become ineffective and costly. The UN. continually threatens US. sovereignty, with endless rhetoric and treaties and it has now become the ‘umpire’ on fraudulent science, such as global warming. The United State needs to withdraw from the United Nations and work solely with America’s willing allies.”

Angle sounds like she’s got a great plan to fundamentally transform America. This time for the better.