Sharron Angle 48%, Harry Reid 41%
Posted on | June 24, 2010 | 23 Comments
Nevada is not wild about Harry, according to Rasmussen, and Professor William Jacobson observes:
What is amazing is that for the past two weeks Harry Reid has been pouring on the attacks against Angle, both through his own advertising, astroturfing, and through friends in the mainstream media and left-wing blogosphere.
Reid’s union-goon buddies are even using ads on conservative blogs to attack Angle.
Why isn’t it working? The Reid campaign has been pumping out opposition research on Angle, depicting her as a dangerous extremist – “she said this” and “she voted for that” and the predictable “she wants to take away granny’s Social Security check.”
The problem for Harry is that when people in Nevada turn on their TVs, they look at Sharron Angle and don’t see the person portrayed by the Reid attack. Instead, they see . . .
Sharron Angle.
She may not be the greatest living American political leader, but she doesn’t “fit the profile” of a scary kook. She seems like a nice ordinary woman – your Mom or your wife or your neighbor.
Most Nevada voters only recently learned Angle’s name as a result of her Cinderella upset of Sue Lowden in the GOP primary. What they’ve seen of Angle with their own eyes and heard with their own ears, they like, and so when she comes under attack, these voters ask themselves: “Why is Harry Reid saying those mean things about her? What is he so afraid of?”
Think: Charles Johnson vs. Pamela Geller.
At some point, the credibility and motives of the attacker become a legitimate subject of inquiry. People rightly consider this a question of character. Once the attacker is demonstrated to be a vicious bully, the details of his accusations become irrelevant. He loses the argument for a simple reason: Nobody likes a bully, especially a bully who picks on girls.
Meanwhile, Professor Jacobson reminds us that Harry Reid called General David Petraeus a liar. If John Cornyn and the NRSC knew what they were doing — strictly a hypothetical, of course – Reid’s attacks on Gen. Petraeus would already be the subject of a Nevada campaign ad.

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