Sharron Angle, the former Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Nevada with robust Tea Party support, slammed Arizona Sen. John McCain for his comments criticizing her and other Tea Partiers during the debt ceiling debate.
“It is regrettable that a man seeking dialogue, action and cooperation for votes on the floor of the United States Senate has only one strategy to achieve that effort: name-calling,” Angle said in a statement. “Nice.”
Angle was referencing McCain’s speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, in which the Republican senator quoted a Wall Street Journal op-ed critical of conservatives against raising the debt ceiling. The article called them “Tea Party Hobbits.”
“This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees,” McCain said, quoting the newspaper.
O’Donnell of Delaware was another failed U.S. Senate candidate who was nominated with the support of Tea Partiers across the country. (RELATED: Closed-door meeting erupts as GOP leaders hammer conservative faction)
“Ironically, this man campaigned for TEA Party support in his last re-election,” Angle said in a release titled, “A Statement from a ‘TEA Party Hobbit,'” “but now throws Christine O’Donnell and I into the harbor with Sarah Palin. As in the fable, it is the hobbits who are the heroes and save the land. This Lord of the TARP actually ought to read to the end of the story and join forces with the TEA Party, not criticize it.”
Continuing, Angle said: “It is similarly unfortunate that Senator McCain brings no new ideas to the Senate floor. In fact, so unoriginal is Senator McCain’s effort that he is reduced to borrowing words from an editorial – rather than bringing anything constructive to this debate.”