New York Times Editorial: Fear and Loathing in Nevada

New York Times Editorial: Fear and Loathing in Nevada
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: October 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/opinion/21thu1.html?th&emc=th


Sharron Angle did not show up at the huge Tea Party Express rally in Las Vegas on Tuesday night. She rarely makes public appearances anymore. But the event was almost entirely in support of her and the divisive, anti-immigrant platform she has promoted in her accelerating drive to replace Senator Harry Reid.

There was a folk song praising Arizona for its immigrant crackdown, and the featured speaker was Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., who marches illegal immigrants through the streets of Phoenix to tent jails in the broiling desert.

Ms. Angle said last week that every state should have a sheriff like Mr. Arpaio, and he returned the compliment, in his own particular, chilling way. “You guys have got a desert here,” he told the cheering, foot-stomping crowd. “Why don’t you put up some tents?” The laughter of his audience of about 2,000 people, most wearing free Angle T-shirts or buttons, practically shook the walls of Stoney’s Rockin’ Country nightclub, where hand-held signs proclaimed Mr. Reid, the Senate majority leader, a traitor, a socialist and garbage.

Mr. Reid’s campaign had once looked forward to running against Ms. Angle, figuring that her extreme positions would quickly marginalize her in the minds of voters. But he somehow failed to recognize just how attractive those positions would be in a state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate and highest rates of foreclosure and bankruptcy. And he was lifeless in last week’s debate instead of making the forceful, animated challenge to Ms. Angle’s radicalism that might have motivated his supporters.

Now she is favored in the year’s most high-profile Senate race. Unless Mr. Reid can muster a huge turnout, there is a strong chance that Ms. Angle will become a United States senator, and she will have done so largely by exploiting fears of illegal Hispanic immigrants in an economically nervous state. One of her television ads, which calls Harry Reid “the best friend illegals have ever had,” shows dark-skinned characters sneaking along a border fence, juxtaposed with a Mexican flag.

In a particularly preposterous bit of spin, she told a group of Hispanic students a few days ago, when she did not realize she was being recorded, that those people were not necessarily Hispanic. They might have been coming through the Canadian border, she said, calling it “the most porous border that we have” and adding that that is “where the terrorists came through.” (The Canadian ambassador immediately protested this nonsense.) For a candidate who famously told Mr. Reid to “man up” at the debate, she should at least take responsibility for her own sneering innuendo.

She is, however, willing to persist in her illusion that Social Security can be fixed only by turning it over to private accounts, a toxic position with older voters that many of her fellow Tea Party candidates pretend they haven’t considered. And she has gone much further than even Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for United States Senate in Delaware, in repudiating the need for separation of church and state. That doctrine, Ms. Angle has said, is “unconstitutional”; she prefers to give religion an expansive position in public life.

Mr. Reid, who is far more comfortable maneuvering compromises through the back rooms of the Senate than campaigning among actual voters, lost his best chance to skewer his opponent’s positions in the debate. Those voters who did not know about his efforts to save jobs in Nevada, or his proposals for using tax incentives to create even more, still don’t.

He might have laughed at her assertion that the nascent health care law is responsible for persistent joblessness, or demanded to know her alternative plan for covering the millions of uninsured. Instead of saying he would leave it to “the experts” to decide what to do about tax cuts for the wealthy, he should have clearly explained to voters how important it is to the nation’s long-term future to raise taxes on families making more than $250,000.

Many Nevadans may not like their choices, but they have a clear one. They can show that they will not cave in to the politics of division and fear.