Angle angling, Pelosi plotting

There were political losers right and left, but apparently some high-profile people don’t intend to go away despite the recent election results.

Here in Nevada it’s likely we’re stuck with Sharron Angle from Reno on the right. A short hop over the Sierra Nevada range in the Bay area, and across the country in the nation’s capital, we’re also stuck with Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco on the left.

Angle lost to longtime Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, a sitting duck she couldn’t hit with a Second Amendment blunderbuss from gut-shot range. More on why later.

Pelosi won reelection from her left-leaning district by the Bay but lost the House speakership in D.C. after leading moderate Democrats through Pelosi purgatory into health-care-reform hell. Republicans secured House control easily.

So what do we get from Nevada’s Tea Party gunner and California’s Me Party moll? Signals that they won’t go quietly into that good night called political oblivion.

Angle at this writing had continued her media-ducking ways for the most part, but right after handing Senate majority leader Reid another six-year term she told supporters:

“We the people have been awakened over the last 20 months. We did not awaken to go back to sleep.”

This, of course, doesn’t guarantee Angle will go to the gate for some other office in 2012 or later. Consider, however, the woman’s track record. In 2006, she lost trying to wrest the GOP nomination for Congress from Dean Heller. In 2008, she did the same against state Sen. William Raggio in a bid to win his legislative seat. In 2010, in a crowded primary, she won the GOP nomination to take on Reid.

Here’s hoping that, to heal the state Republican Party and restore sanity, it is three strikes, and she’s out. I’m not anti-Angle, but enough divisiveness is enough. Neither am I pro-Angle, especially after she and her handlers lost to an unpopular Reid.

Even as Brian Sandoval ran for and won the governorship, Angle & Co. decided to antagonize Hispanic Nevadans via Willie Horton-style TV ads and thoughtless comments to Hispanics that some of them looked Asian to her.

Remember Willie Horton, the dark criminal TV image George H.W. Bush used to bury Michael Dukakis?

If not, be advised the late Lee Atwater (the Karl Rove of Bush the First) used Horton to smear Massachusetts Gov. Dukakis. But this year’s Angle reprise of Horton-like TV ads backfired. Reid got a huge majority of Hispanic votes, helping him survive.

Sandoval’s Hispanic heritage meant there was a solid turnout by that significant voting bloc Nov. 2. And that, coupled with Reid’s established ground game, the Hispanic-baiting commercials and Angle’s other positions made her flame out.

Regarding Pelosi’s future, the handwriting already is on the wall. She wants to be House minority leader next year and likely will be.

Whatever happened to falling on your sword after leading your troops into slaughter? Nancy’s fancy prompts awe and wonderment that she would be so brazen after failing her party so spectacularly.

Pelosi’s bravura aside, such grasping at straws to remain on the political stage reeks of self-involved hubris. The only bipartisanship in sight is that rank-and-file House Democrats and Republicans want Pelosi to keep leading downsized House liberals (obviously due to differing political perceptions).

But someone needs to counsel these high-profile losers, left and right, to say adios and ride post haste into the sunset.