Thursday, August 2, 2012

Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid Gets Feisty and a Little Nasty

Breaking the Republican Monopoly on Innuendo and Personal Attacks

One of the many ways in which Democrats are losing in the national arena, big time, is that try as they might they just cannot be as mean and nasty as Republicans.  There is no Democratic counterpart to Rush Limbaugh,  whom despite his agenda of attacking the person rather than the policy seems to be firmly locked in step with Republicans, no matter what he says.

But Harry Reid has taken the proverbial gloves off.  First of all he accuses Mr. Romney of not paying any income taxes for a period of the last 10 years, an assertion based on a dubious, unknown source.

Mr. Reid - Probably Having A Lot of Fun

Reid suggested that Romney’s decision to withhold tax information would bar him from ever earning Senate confirmation to a Cabinet post. Then, Reid recalled a phone call his office received about a month ago from “a person who had invested with Bain Capital,” according to The Huffington Post.

Reid said the person told him: “Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years.”
“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” Reid told HuffPo. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?”

Neither Reid nor his aides would identify the alleged investor, HuffPo reported.

Quite frankly, The Dismal Political Economist is dubious of that claim, in large part because Mr. Romney has both ordinary income and capital gains.  The losses from capital gains, if any cannot be used to offset ordinary income.  So it would seem Mr. Romney had to have paid some tax.  Of course, Mr. Reid may be playing a very strong political hand, knowing that Mr. Romney could easily refute the accusation by releasing his tax returns, and knowing that he probably won’t.

On a more sound footing, Mr. Reid makes fun of the group of billionaires bankrolling the takeover of the election.

“Where the problem is, is this: Because of the Citizens United decision, Karl Rove and the Republicans are looking forward to a breakfast the day after the election,” Reid said. “They are going to assemble 17 angry old white men for breakfast, some of them will slobber in their food, some will have scrambled eggs, some will have oatmeal, their teeth are gone. But these 17 angry old white men will say, ‘Hey, we just bought America. Wasn’t so bad. We still have a whole lot of money left.’”

 And one look at people like Sheldon Adelson says Mr. Reid’s vision is not that far off the mark.

So yes, Mr. Reid is highly partisan, somewhat off base and is engaging in dubious attacks.  Sorry Republicans, but you started it.



2 comments:

  1. I'm getting concerned about Reid. First he made bizarre comments about the U.S. Olympic team wearing nothing but sashes saying "Made in America" rather than outfits made in China. Now he's talking about tax evasion conspiracies and slobbering.

    I expect Romney/Republicans will respond that they are shocked by this partisan attack and consider it proof that Obama/Democrats don't want to talk about their policies.

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