(Chuck Muth) – While Sharron Angle was running scared from local media during the campaign, I (and a number of others) bravely did an interview with Al Jazeera last month, which was in town doing a “Faultline” documentary on the tea party movement in general, and its potential impact on the Reid/Angle race in particular.
It was very well done and you can find it by clicking here. And here’s a transcript of my brief cameo appearance:
Narrator: Nevada has no income tax and no tax on corporate profits. The state Legislature only sits for six months every two years. This is a state with about as little government as you can find anywhere in America. But it’s still too much for conservatives like Chuck Muth, former Republican operative and current tea party supporter.
Muth: My position has been, in the past, that the government needs to tighten its belt and do more with less. I think we’ve gotten to the point now, with this recession and the severity of it, that we need to, finally, really look at forcing the government to do less with less. There are just some things that we shouldn’t be doing, or can’t be doing. We need to set priorities.
Interviewer: So are you, um, would you go as far as Grover Norquist in terms of the role of government in society?
Muth: Make it small enough to drown it in a bathtub? Yeah. Absolutely.
Interviewer: Help me understand this. You’ve got no personal income tax in this state; you’ve got no corporate profit tax in this state; you’ve got some of the least government spending per capita anywhere in this country – and this is the place where you need less government?
Muth: Yes. This is supposed to be the beacon of light and hope; this is Las Vegas, baby!
There’s also a clip of the Angle folks being angrily thrown out of the Faith Lutheran Church auditorium by an organizer of that now-infamous event for violating some pre-condition apparently established for the non-debate forum.
There’s also a closing clip of Angle trying to duck out a back door to hide from the press after an event in Reno, only to be caught in the parking lot by the Al Jazeera camera crew. But as was standard operating procedure for Team Angle throughout the campaign, Angle’s handlers blocked access to the candidate and forced the camera crew to vamoose, shutting a gate in their face.
This embarrassing effort to hide from a media camera crew and duck questions occurred even before the more famous, now infamous, brush with Nathan Baca and the Channel 8 cameraman at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas the weekend before the election which resulted in the Angle campaign actually banning Baca from the Nevada GOP “victory” party at the Venetian on election night.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If you’re running for the United States Senate, especially if you’re challenging an incumbent United States senator, you can’t be afraid to take questions from the media or debate your opponent. If you are, then you shouldn’t be running for the United States Senate.
A lesson for those already “angling” for John Ensign’s seat in 2012.
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