Angle Fails To Convince Ensign She Has Principles

Posted by Myrna the Minx on August 29, 2006 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

If anyone didn’t already have reason enough to question Angle’s decision making abilities, this should just about do it for you. Ensign discusses two conversations he had with Sharron Angle with Ray Hager of Inside Nevada Politics:

“Normally I would not comment, but she did,” Ensign said. “It was a private conversation and it wasn’t just today. I actually talked to her last week for the first time. And to set the record straight, I talked to her last week as somebody who had been in that position. I was there in 1998 when Washoe County had incredible irregularities. I can’t even go through the number of irregularities that happened in 1998. To this day — and Harry Reid and I have talked about it — there probably should have been a new election in 1998. But it wasn’t going to work and it was not going to happen.”

Ensign was referring to his hard-fought campaign against now-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid in 1998, which Ensign lost the election by 428 votes.

“I related my story to her and I related John Thune’s story to her,” Ensign said. “I was trying to give her advice about learning to cut your losses so you can save your political career.”

John Thune is the junior senator from South Dakota. In 2002, he challenged Sen. Tim Johnson, but lost by 524 votes. Thune decided not to pursue a recount. Instead, Thune ran for the Senate two years later against then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. In 2004, Thune narrowly defeated Daschle, winning 51% of the vote.

“I told her (Angle) that John Thune and I ended up winning our next elections,” Ensign said. “I told her, I respect you but for your political career, the best choice for you is not to do this.”

That was the end of the first conversation between Ensign and Angle, Ensign said. Then came Monday night’s conversation:

“Well, I had not heard back from her but I also heard that she was going forward with this, so I called her back last night,” Ensign said. “I asked her, are you going forward with this? She said yes. So I told her, well if you are going forward, I just wanted you to know that I’m going to put out a statement saying that I support Dean Heller.

“Then she tried to pull this one one me — about compromising your principles,” Ensign said.

“I said, don’t put words in my mouth. I am not compromising my principles,” Ensign said. “We are not talking about fraud in this election. If there was fraud, then that would be a different story. I said, you just had something bad happen to you, like poll workers not showing up. Well sometimes, unfortunate things happen in an election.

“And at that point, I said, the greater good is to make sure the Republicans hold on to this seat and that she should call this off and get behind Dean Heller,” Ensign said. “That’s when I said I was going to put out a statement saying I was going to get behind Dean Heller.

“She asked me not to and I told her: Listen, you have to do what you have to do,” Ensign said. “You believe that you are doing the right thing and I believe what I am doing is right. Let’s agree to disagree on this. But that should have been a private conversation.”

I don’t think lecturing the highest ranking Republican state lawmaker (save the Governor Guinn) about principles is a wise career move. Even Chuck Muth thinks she should stand down.