September 27, 2010 10:05 PM UTC

Angle, Buck Go "Ghost"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Fascinating tidbit by Time’s Joe Klein, from his Election Road Trip series:

[Sharron] Angle is part of a growing legion of (mostly Republican) ghost politicians. It’s a trend that has been building for years: why risk actually meeting with the public, or dealing with the media, if there’s a chance you might say something makaka. If you’re an inexperienced extremist like Angle, Rand Paul or Christine O’Donnell, there’s a very good chance you’re going to screw up. If you ran a primary race as a right-wing scorcher, like Ken Buck in Colorado, there’s always a chance you’re going to get caught modifying a position. (I’m therefore grateful to Buck for the courage he showed in meeting a politically unreliable columnist like me–really!)

In fact, I went to a Buck event for veterans in Denver that consisted of the following: Candidate walks in, shakes every hand. Candidate announces that he’s not going to say anything of substance because of the presence of a Democratic Party tracker (with videocam). Candidate leaves…

Maybe it’s been a growing trend for a number of years, but a combination of circumstances is making the carefully-managed inaccessibility much worse this year–especially for the present crop of hard-right candidates mentioned above. In Sharron Angle’s case, as it is for Delaware GOP nominee Christine O’Donnell, and certainly seems to be for Ken Buck as well now that his on-camera reversals are really starting to do damage, hunkering down and riding “the wave” to victory is probably the best strategy they’ve got. Buck’s weak and contradictory appearance on Face the Nation yesterday isn’t going to give him much confidence to try something else.

This is what the insiders were always worried about, folks–and it’s why in each of these races, they wanted somebody else to win the primary. What they got instead were candidates who might benefit from this “wave year,” but who aren’t in a position to help themselves. They are in fact fully dependent on that “wave” to retain any hope of victory; without it they are not viable candidates.

It had better pan out, hadn’t it?