Angle-ing for a House Seat...she's baa-aaack

Tea Party darling Sharron Angle

I'm tempted to ponder the merits of enforcing a no-fly-zone over Lybia, whether President Obama was right to commit U.S. troops to battle without asking Congress for permission, and whether "Odyssey Dawn" is a cool name for a military action -- but that's foreign policy talk, which is just a little outside my bailiwick. Plus, those are difficult subjects to tackle, and I feel like going after the low hanging fruit.

It's easy to squeeze out a few hundred words about Reno Republican Sharron Angle, who announced this week that she'll be running for a Nevada House seat in 2012. You remember Angle. Just a few months ago she went toe-to-toe with heavyweight Harry Reid and managed to stay on her feet with the Tea Party movement in her corner.

Angle punches above her political weight class. At best, she's a bantamweight fighter, but she isn't afraid to get in the ring with the big boys. And she talks trash. She told Harry Reid to "man up." I like that about her. But that's as close to praise as I'd like to get. Mostly, I see Angle as a necessary evil of American politics. But before I get into that, take 90 seconds and watch this announcement video posted by Angle's campaign this week:

This announcement, along with Angle's other campaign communications, represent the bulk of what mainstream media outlets get directly from the candidate. She's more comfortable on right-wing radio programs, where the hosts are friendly and the audiences are receptive to her brand of conservatism. When Nevada newspapers write about Angle it's often about something she said on the radio. It's not surprising. She's right to believe that most newspaper and television journalists are suspicious of, and even hostile to, her policy positions. The stances she has taken deserve scrutiny, perhaps most importantly because they are so polarizing. The following is a list of the choicest cuts:

• She opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest
• Given her 'druthers, Angle would dismantle the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service
• She wants to end Social Security and Medicare and has referred to both programs as "welfare"
• The Constitution does not require the separation of church and state, if you believe her
• If it were up to Angle, the U.S. would withdraw from the United Nations

Then, of course, there are outrageous claims Angle made during her campaign against Reid last year, such as her assertion that the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. through Canada, that sharia law is "taking hold" in Dearborn, Mich. and Frankford, Texas, and those cryptic comments about Second Amendment "remedies," that some folks interpreted as a call to armed revolution.

I mention all that so I can say no matter how repugnant her policy positions may be, and however foolish -- even dangerous -- her gaffes might have been during the last year's campaign, it's basically a good thing that American politics has polarizing candidates like Angle. They're a necessary component of the basic dynamics of the whole system.

First, they're perfect targets for politicians on the other side of the aisle. If not for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (and Obama), who would the conservatives have singled out as enemies of of the electorate last year? If not for John Boehner and Paul Ryan, who would the left be squealing about now?

Second, as fringe candidates they promote centrism within their own parties, by giving their contemporaries extreme points of view to distance themselves from and ludicrous comments to "refutiate." 

Finally, they give journalists, pundits and bloggers something easy to talk about. Imagine if I had waded into that whole Libya thing.

In Defense of Peter King...Sort Of

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.)

I hate to put myself in the position of defending Congressman Peter King. So I'm not going to. But he needs a defense attorney, or the wits of one, to explicate why he's holding hearings on the radicalization of Muslim-Americans in the United States. As soon as King's critics caught wind of his plans they charged him with McCarthyism and accused him of leading a witch hunt. I won't defend his hypothesis or his methods, those are both bogus. But King has correctly identified a problem, his heart is in the right place, and the charges against him are trumped up. You can watch King explain his reasons for bringing the issue up in Congress, which critics worry will stoke anti-Muslim sentiment in the public, in the video below. He did a nice job sticking up for himself this week on MSNBC's Morning Joe when he squared off against The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, a formidable opponent by any standard.

Every time a member of Congress holds a hearing that singles out a group of Americans as being a potential threat it's tempting to call that McCarthyism. But it's not always so. When King suggests Muslim-Americans should have to sign loyalty oaths to keep their jobs I'll concede that he's crossed the threshold of McCarthyism, but until then suggesting that Peter King is as bad Joe McCarthy indulges in revisionist history that underestimates just how bad McCarthy was. As for the charge of leading a witch hunt, that's also tempting but not always so. If there were no such thing as Muslim-American radicals planning attacks within the United States and the Congressman was going from mosque to mosque rounding up suspects, giving them "trials" and burning them at the stake, then I would say there was a convincing case to be made on the witch hunt indictment. But Muslim-American radicals planning attacks within the United States are real.

That may be the only agreement the Congressman and I have on this issue. Our viewpoints diverge sharply immediately thereafter. King correctly identifies the problem of Muslim Americans becoming radicalized in their local communities, but he seems to believe that Muslim Americans who aren't plotting attacks aren't doing enough to rat out the ones who are. And the shoddy method he's chosen to prove that phony hypothesis is by inviting Dr. Zuhdi Jasser to testify about a supposed code of silence within the Muslim-American community. The Nation's Sarah Posner sums up Jasser's argument nicely:

Jasser is undoubtedly part of a strategy to deflect widespread criticism that King’s hearings are an attempt smear all Muslims with a broad brush. That’s an accusation that Jasser and others in the anti-Muslim agitprop stable are accustomed to averting. And they do so with a sleight of hand: that it’s not individual American Muslims who are radical, it’s their leaders—Muslim charities and civil rights groups, imams and a religious leadership that is dominated by radicals, who in turn dupe the gullible masses.

Zaid Jilani, left-wing blogger for Think Progress, appearing on Russia Today also gave a searing indictment against Jasser and his claims. You can see his take on the hearings in the video below.