Extreme Sharrontology: Let New Orleans Drown, The Gulf Coast Vanish

Sharron Angle is so cruel and heartless, she would have let New Orleans drown five years ago when Hurricane Katrina hit. (Audio)

During an interview on conservative KLAV radio in 2005, which she once had up on her site, Angle invoked Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, who she claimed said he was voting "no" because the Katrina money was not carefully accounted for. The truth is Pence actually wanted the money to be offset – Human Events was so proud of him, it gave Pence “Man of the Year” in 2005.

But Pence actually voted FOR the $62 billion. His “yea” is right there in the congressional record after someone named Pelosi.

The day after the Sept. 8, 2005, vote, even House Majority Leader Tom DeLay told The Wall Street Journal: “It's too important to play politics with. It's too important to second-guess."

Contemporaneous news stories indicate Pence the budget hawk was taken to the woodshed by Speaker Dennis Hastert and Delay, presumably because his demands for offsets were not so politically wise in his leaders’ minds.

Even most REPUBLICANS in 2005 realized they couldn't ignore the cries for help in The Gulf Coast, and the Katrina aid package passed overwhelmingly. This obviously would have been a "534 to Angle" moment, much like the many "62 to Angle" moments in the Nevada Legislature when Sharron Angle voted against the most common-sense, bipartisan supported legislation, just "out of principle".

So her "principles" mean let people hurt by natural disasters suffer because that might mean money that couldn't be used on another tax break for the super-rich?

Steve Sebelius summed this up best.

It’s this ability to turn a blind eye to real people in real need that I think is a fascinating, and tragic, part of the conservative persona. To hold one’s own philosophy so highly that you’d refuse aid to people who desperately need it just to avoid contradicting one’s own beliefs seems to me the height of arrogance, if not moral idiocy.

Angle is not wrong that deficits are not good, and that debt is a bad thing, long-term. She’s not wrong that pay-as-you-go rules are good things, in general, to ensure that spending remains in control.

But there comes a time when those principles must yield for the good of real people suffering in real situations not of their making. (For example, extending unemployment benefits, which Angle also opposes, having once said those benefits “spoil” the jobless and keep them from looking for work.) In those times, we must do what we need to do to help.

By the way, that, too, is a philosophical outlook. I like to think of it as humanity.

And so do I. Five years ago, the people of New Orleans suffered a horrible deficit: a shelter deficit, along with a food deficit. And right now, people throughout Nevada are being hurt by a very cruel deficit: a jobs deficit. There are times when we have to remember our priorities. And while it's important in the long term to work on balancing the budget, a balanced budget doesn't do anything right now to help victims of a natural disaster or help the unemployed find work.

Once again, Sharrontology is out of touch with reality.