Reid Smear Machine Gears Up for Angle

(Mark Noonan) – Got this from The Plum Line at the Washington Post:

“Harry Reid’s political operation in Nevada is quietly assembling a battle plan to take on Tea Partyer Sharron Angle in the general election, presuming she beats Sue Lowden in today’s GOP primary.

The strategy: Use her own words to paint her as, well, a complete whackjob. Sound familiar? That’s what ground up Lowden in the wake of the chickens-for-checkups gaffe.”

Harry Reid cannot win by running on his record. He’s been an utter failure as a Senator and Majority Leader. Nevada, by every reasonable measure, is worse off now than it was when Reid was last re-elected. On the face of it, there is no case to make for another Reid term. And Reid knows this – had he as shred of honor or decency, he would have bowed out and allowed fresh political blood to enter the stream.

But, corrupt, old political hacks are not the sort of people with shreds of decency. Reid wants to stay on the political gravy train. Its where he’s made his millions and set his children up in wealth and power. His only hope in this is to make the Republican candidate so odious that, by comparison, he comes off as the better alternative.

This is a tried and true Democrat tactic. It was most memorably used to re-elect former California Governor Gray Davis back in 2002. Like Reid, Davis of was horrendously unpopular and had run his State up on the rocks while his cronies profited off the public’s dime. Davis ran such a relentlessly negative campaign that people were turned off from politics, thus allowing the Governor to squeak to a narrow victory (in the long run, it didn’t work out so well – Davis fell to the recall effort shortly thereafter; but Democrats don’t care about the long run…all that matters is winning, today). Reid wants to duplicate this effort.

In this effort, Reid will pull out all the stops. It doesn’t matter if an accusation to be made against Angle is true or false – all that matters is if it can be made in a news cycle and become part of the public debate. Reid counts on the lap dog MSM to not look too closely in to his tactics while taking each accusation against Angle at face value. Reid has built up a massive campaign war chest to do just this – smear his opponent (or, as one of his aides put it, “vaporize” the Republican nominee).

The most important factor here is how well Angle can stand up to it. If she can take the bricks being thrown at her, she’ll be half way to victory. But the other half of victory is for the rest of us to counter Reid’s lies with truth. Those of us who are engaged in the political debate must not let the slightest charge pass unchallenged. As well, we must continually remind the people of Nevada of just how bad Reid has been as a Senator.

The truth will always overcome lies – but the truth needs to be told. And told again and again and again. Get ready for the hardest, nastiest political fight in Nevada history. The payoff, if we do our job, is and end to Reid and a restoration of honor in American government.