Thoughts on Harry Reid and Mitt Romney

There are few people in politics for whom I have less respect than Harry Reid.  He ranks even below Barack Obama in my book.  He has been an embarrassment to his country and his party for years.  During the Bush Administration, he called President Bush a "loser" while speaking to a class of school age children, and he stated on the Senate floor that the U.S. had lost the war in Iraq while our troops were still fighting and in harm's way.  He made crass comments about Obama being a light-skinned Negro with no dialect during the 2008 election campaign, and he compared opponents of ObamaCare to supporters of slavery and segregation on the Senate floor.  Under his "leadership," the Senate hasn't passed a budget in several years.  Yet the Democrats are happy to have him as the highest-ranking Democrat in Congress and the public face of their party. 

Reid's latest outrage is to claim that Mitt Romney hasn't paid taxes in 10 years, claiming some secret source connected to Bain Capital.  This claim is ridiculous on its face, since there have been no audits or investigations by the IRS.  Reid has no evidence to back up his claim and refuses to name his source.  When challenged about it, Reid demonstrated his legal prowess by saying the burden of proof was on Romney to disprove this ridiculous allegation.  It seems pretty obvious to me that Reid is just making up claims out of thin air, since he knows the only way to disprove them is for Romney to release his tax returns for the past ten years and Romney has already said he will not do that.  Remember, the man doing this is the Senate Majority Leader. 

Not surprisingly, conservatives are unloading on Reid.  Rich Lowry calls Reid a "malicious hack" who cares nothing about his "reputation, [his] institution, or the truth."  The Wall Street Journal editorial page refers to Reid's accusations as "a smear from the fever swamps."  But interestingly, Reid is facing some harsh criticism from the Left as well.  Liberal Richard Cohen of The Washington Post, for example, wrote a column entitled "Harry Reid's Gutter Politics" in which he surprisingly unloads not just on Reid, but also on the Democrats in the Senate and the Obama campaign team for supporting Reid.  Cohen writes:

For Reid, this is yet another brazen and tasteless partisan attack. As majority leader, he has managed to sink the public image of the Senate even lower than it would otherwise be. He contributes to bad feelings, gridlock and the sense — nay, the reality — that everything is done for political advantage....  He is the face of the Democratic Party in the Senate and the ally of President Obama. Yet, not a single Democrat has had the spine to rebuke Reid. The White House has been given the chance and explicitly ducked its duty....  Reid has managed to draw both his party and his president into the gutter with him. When Reid accuses the Republicans of being overly partisan, he now lacks all credibility....  As for Obama, he is tarnished by this episode. The fresh new face that promised us all a different kind of politics is suddenly looking cheesy. The soaring rhetoric that Obama used in his first campaign has come to ground in the mud of Harry Reid’s latter-day McCarthyism.

Wow.  When you are getting this kind of blistering criticism from the Left, you know you have crossed a line.  Perhaps this explains why yesterday, finally, Obama's press secretary started to back away from Reid's comments.

I also wanted to briefly comment on Romney's response to the Chick-Fil-A controversy.  For those who haven't heard, Romney was asked for his opinion on Friday about Chick-Fil-A as well as Michele Bachmann's allegations about the Muslim Brotherhood's infiltration of the federal government.  Romney refused to comment on either one, stating that "those are not things that are part of my campaign." 

At least with regard to Chick-Fil-A (haven't researched the other topic enough to have an informed opinion), I think this was a mistake, both on the merits and on the politics of the issue.  I have already written extensively about my opinion on the merits of this issue.  I think Romney also missed a big opportunity here politically.  I understand that he wants to keep the focus of his campaign on the economy, but that doesn't mean he can never discuss other issues that come up.  He didn't even have to get into the issue of the definition of marriage.  All he needed to say was that the Democratic mayors were out of line in trying to deny Chick-Fil-A the right to operate in their cities.  It would have been hard even for the left-wing media to twist that statement into something controversial, while at the same time it would have encouraged Romney's conservative base that he understood the free speech and government control issues behind this "gay" controversy.  Romney has already come out in support of traditional marriage, so it's not like the gay rights activists pushing for the Chick-Fil-A boycott are going to vote for him anyway.  Or, as Dennis Prager points out, he could have made an even stronger statement by eating lunch at Chick-Fil-A and dessert at Ben & Jerry's, and in so doing attempt to draw an even sharper distinction between himself and the Democrats on the issue of freedom.  By refusing to say anything at all, Romney is reinforcing the concerns that many on the Right have about him -- that he is a squish who avoids controversy at any cost and cannot be counted on to stand up for issues that we care about.  The massive Chick-Fil-A turnout last week shows that this is an issue that the Republican base is passionate about, and Romney would have been wise not to just brush it aside.  Romney failed to swing at a soft pitch that should have been hit out of the park, and I think that says something worrisome about his political instincts (possibly his principles as well).

UPDATE: Apparently Jim Geraghty of Campaign Spot shares my extreme frustration with the dirty tactics of the Democrats.  He has a great blog post entitled "Wanted: A Running Mate Who Will Fight Back, With Passion!"  He cites a recent Obama campaign that accuses Romney of killing a woman.  Yes, you read that right.  Obama is running ads claiming Mitt Romney killed someone.  That's the kind of opponent we're up against.  Geraghty is right.  We need a fighter.