Angle aims at GOP leaders
Sometime-Republican Sharron Angle is planning to police who can and cannot be a Republican.
In a mailing to her political action committee contributors, Angle wrote that she will try to “remove those Republican imposters. … These ‘Republicans In Name Only' have infected all corners of government and are capable of even more damage than Democrats, because a RINO can't be trusted to do the right thing, ever.”
In 2014, Angle's PAC raised $474,270 and paid out $513,976.
“Yes, Republicans won last year, but do you have faith that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell won't cave to the president on tough issues like illegal immigration, the funding of Obamacare, and cutting the outrageous government spending?” the mailing read further. “We don't either. That's why we are planning an all out assault on the weak-kneed, spineless Republican imposters who have infected our beloved Party.”
Angle is a Republican-turned-Independent American-turned Republican again. The Independent American Party was formed as the Nevada arm of George Wallace's 1968 third party. Former GOP state chair Bob Cashell has said it is people like Angle who are RINOs. “These people claim to be Ronald Reagan conservatives, and they're not,” he said in 2010. “I knew Ronald Reagan. He asked me to join the Republican Party when I was a conservative Democrat, and I'm still a conservative Republican. … The RINOs are the other people to the far, far right.”
During a 2012 campaign in Pennsylvania, Angle attacked GOP U.S. Senate candidate Steve Welch, who was supported by the state Republican Party, for party switching.
Angle has been a member of the Nye County School Board and the Nevada Legislature. In 2010, with the help of Democrat Harry Reid, she won the Republican U.S. Senate nomination. In that race, Angle was one of the lesser candidates in the GOP primary running against frontrunner Sue Lowden. Reid wanted to run against one of the minor candidates, and his campaign launched fierce attacks on Lowden in advance of the primary. Lowden's numbers started falling and Angle was the beneficiary, winning the primary with 40.09 percent of the vote. Reid then won a comfortable 5.74 margin over Angle.