Sharron Angle flummoxes local press with "stimulus" non-sequitor

Here's the latest out of Nevada: Sharron Angle is getting attention for flubbing an answer involving job creation in a manner that raises questions about whether she grasps an enormously important local issue.

This is not going to get the sort of national coverage that attended her "slush fund" or "Second Amemdment Remedies" claims. But in a sense this kind of thing can actually be more important, since it more directly concerns a major local issue directly afflicting Nevada residents.

What happened was this: Angle, under fire for saying she disagreed with something Harry Reid did that saved a project involving thousands of local jobs, claimed that what she'd really meant to say was that she opposed the stimulus. The problem, as a flummoxed local reporter pointed out, is that the stimulus had nothing to do with the project in question.

The mess started last week when Angle was asked if she would have intervened in order to save MGM Resorts' City Center complex. The center suffered serious financial struggles last year during construction, and looked like it was about to go belly up. But Reid called several banks and got them to extend loans, helping the project avert bankruptcy.

Angle subsequently said on the radio that she wouldn't have stepped in. And later, she added that so doing would be "kind of like shifting the chairs on the Titanic." Given that Angle is already under fire for claiming that job creation isn't in a U.S. Senator's job description, these comments were obviously less than helpful.

Now Angle has tried to clarify these comments in an interview with the local Fox affiliate. She said:

"What I said on the radio is that I would not have voted for the stimulus for the City Center. And the reason is because what happened there was Harry Reid rewarded some friends at the expense of other businesses in town. Stimulus does not work and we've seen that with the unemployment rate going up."

But this project wasn't collecting any stimulus dollars. "There were no public dollars used for City Center," the Fox reporter rejoined, adding that what Reid "actually did was just pick up the phone and ask the banks to go ahead and loan some money that was needed in order to finish the construction [with] 22,000 jobs on the line."

Again, this kind of thing won't gain the national traction of her more lurid claims. But this sort of stuff is likely to get more attention from Nevada voters who might fairly ask themselves whether Angle grasps the basics of this hugely important local issue.

