After Sharron Angle went on ABC News and basically reiterated her "Second Amendment remedies" statements and repeated that if Republicans don't like the election results, they may end up turning to their guns, or armed insurrection, Rachel Maddow asks, just what does a Republican political candidate have to say these days to finally be considered out of the mainstream?
September 8, 2010

After Sharron Angle went on ABC News and basically reiterated her "Second Amendment remedies" statements and repeated that if Republicans don't like the election results, they may end up turning to their guns, or armed insurrection, Rachel Maddow asks, just what does a Republican political candidate have to say these days to finally be considered out of the mainstream?

MADDOW: What is over the line? What qualifies as an unacceptable position for a major party nominee to hold in this year's elections? What earns a reprimand from the party What earns other politicians distancing themselves from a position that is too extreme? What's too extreme? This year a lot of positions that used to be politically over the line seem to be viable. Positions like Social Security should be abolished. Women should be forced to bear their rapist's babies. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a bad idea.

Those positions, despite what they've been seen as in previous years, this year aren't necessarily seen as too controversial. But is there anything that is too far out there, too over the line? How about candidates saying if conservatives don't get what they want in this year's elections we should expect conservatives to use guns instead to get what they want? […]

ANGLE: I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.

MADDOW: But if the vote isn't the cure, if the vote doesn't work against the Harry Reid problems then there's the second amendment. There's guns.

Just to make sure it is super clear that Sharron Angle is in fact threatening that conservatives should be expected to use guns to get their way if they don't get the results they want from the next election, in may Sharron Angle told the Reno Gazette-Journal “...the nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn't that they are so distrustful of their government? They're afraid they'll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways?... That's why I look at this as almost an imperative. If we don't win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?”

What will be the next step? If conservatives don't get what they want in the election? Sharron Angle is warning that it will be conservatives using guns to try to get their way. This is not the hyperbole. There is no further context to these remarks. She keeps volunteering this quote over and over again. This is what she has been saying. [...]

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Committee are funding this campaign where the candidate says expect conservatives to try to use the second amendment, try to use guns to get what they want if they lose the election.

Given the opportunity to recant that now that she is the Republican Party's official nominee for senate, instead the candidate has essentially just reiterated it and laughed.

Is this considered a main stream position now? Everybody down with this idea? RNSC, RNC, are you guys okay with this? If this is now a main stream position that we should expect political, armed political violence in this country if conservatives don't get what they want in the next election, if this is a main stream position, what counts as over the line now?

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