Angle-shooting

That's politics, not poker.

Sharron Angle appears to have won the Nevada Republican primary to take on Harry Reid for his senatorial seat in November.

Angle is no libertarian, and her views don't match mine on a variety of topics (immigration, abortion, gay marriage, to name a few--and though I don't know of any public stance on the matter, I'd lay about 99:1 that she buys into the "crack cocaine of gambling" crap about online poker). However, I have to say that as far as I can tell she is the rare politician who is actually principled; she says what she believes without being mealy-mouthed about it, and consistently votes the same way, even if she is the sole voice of opposition. I'd like to think that's how I'd be if I were in public office.

As I believe that an appallingly expanded federal government and national debt are the most important and worrisome general political tides these days, and seeing that she is squarely on the right side of those matters, I'm going to be inclined to support her, even while disagreeing with her on other matters of substance. She also has the endorsement of the Gun Owners of America, a group that reflects my position on the second amendment far better than the revoltingly wishy-washy NRA.*

Regardless of the outcome this fall, though, it will make for one hell of an interesting race. There are not many more starkly polarized choices that a voter could be asked to make than between Harry Reid and Sharron Angle.


*It occurs to me, in reflection, that some readers will think I'm being sarcastic here. I'm not. Though the NRA is often portrayed as being rabidly, insanely opposed to any manner of governmental regulation of firearms, that is far from the truth. Second amendment True Believers (and you could probably count me as one of them) get either nauseated or infuriated at the NRA for its track record of being willing to compromise on all sorts of things. There has been a lot of infighting and shenanigans at the NRA's board of directors over this stuff, and the compromisers have consistently won. I won't bore you with the history--just take my word for it. And now that I'm off on this tangent, I'll tell you that I just discovered that an article I wrote several years ago (2005, I think) about gun control in the Journal of Firearms and Public Policy is available online, here. It won't be of much general interest, I'm afraid; it's a rather technical legal piece about conflicts between state firearm statutes and city/county ordinances. But it did win me a "James Madison Award" from the Second Amendment Foundation. See what surprising things you can learn about a guy from his blog?