I’m pretty confident Sharron Angle will end up winning. I think she’ll get help from the governor’s race, where Sandoval is going to demolish Harry’s son. GOP voter turnout will be high due to house races as well, I would imagine. He doesn’t have the sort of charisma that should make one excited to come out and vote for him. Sure, the union/public sector crowd will, but are the independents that easily supported him in the past going to continue supporting him after he’s spent the last years screwing up our country with a far left agenda as Majority Leader? I’m betting no. There is so much low hanging fruit for Sharron Angle to use against him, and she’ll certainly get as much national help as any Republican, considering who she is up against.

If, heaven forbid, Harry should win, I do think it will provide conservatives a cautionary tale about picking nominees. Harry Reid is obviously a weak, flawed candidate who should be incredibly vulnerable running for reelection in a state like Nevada. There’s no reason Republicans can’t win this seat. So, if Sharron Angle loses, I do think it means Republicans picked the wrong candidate, something I would not say about a Republican running in, say, Maryland or Vermont or against a more likeable, less extreme incumbent. I’m all for getting the most conservative Republican we can find into office, but I think it’s important to not outdrive our headlights politically by choosing someone who can’t adequately defend their conservatism. There are a lot of great points to be made not just for conservatism in general but for boldly libertarian/conservative ideas. However, I do think it works against us when our candidates get caught up in issues that sound goofy and extreme to most people. I wish I lived in a country where our most pro-big government office holder was Tom Coburn, but that’s not realistic in the near future. To win, we need candidates who not only believe in conservative ideas but can communicate them effectively. This means appealing to open-minded people in the middle who are easily frightened by radically different views of government and who won’t spare much time listening to political ideas. Maybe Sharron Angle will prove she is that person. Still, it seems she is still limited in her appeal to mainstream voters, and at this point, it seems like she will have to rely more on anti-Reid sentiment than pro-Angle sentiment.

Ultimately, I think we should avoid choosing candidates based primarily on who’s most conservative but rather based on who will be effective in communicating conservative ideas and actually performing the duties of the office. For instance, a lot of conservatives were upset that Chris Christie beat the more conservative Steve Lonegan. But now, Christie is basically a rock star among conservatives. Some NJ conservatives may still not think he’s conservative enough, but it isn’t at all clear than Lonegan could have beaten Corzine, and even if he did, it’s not clear that he would be energizing and inspiring conservatives nationally the way Christie is. I’m not at all saying we should pick RINOs, but I do think we should avoid the more-conservative-than-thou method of picking nominees, realizing that in politics, communicating ideas is no less important than believing ideas.