(Fred Weinberg/The Penny Press) – I was not a primary supporter of Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination to run against Barack Obama.
In fact, I remember telling a friend of mine—who happens to be a Mormon Bishop—that my position wasn’t because Romney’s a Mormon. It’s because he put me to sleep.
That said, I have been rethinking my antipathy towards a Romney nomination and have come around to believing that a Romney presidency may just be the antidote to the place where Obama has navigated this nation today.
In much the same way that Dwight D. Eisenhower gave us eight years of a relatively unexciting but very competent presidency, I have come to believe that is what Romney now offers after four years of foolishness and amateurism.
And if Obama’s hallmark is amateurism, then his court jester has to be our own Harry Reid.
I fully understand how Reid got himself re-elected in 2010. From a political ground game perspective, he did everything right and his opponent took a lead and squandered it by doing everything—and I mean everything—wrong. (Starting with her belief that she could counter Reid’s ground game with media. In baseball, pitching beats hitting and in retail politics, ground game beats media. Every time.)
But Reid’s idiot bleating that he has a “confidential” source which told him that Romney has not paid taxes in 10 years while Reid himself refuses to release his own tax returns and has a hard time explaining where his own wealth has come from in view of the fact he has been sucking on the Government teat his entire career is in the stunningly stupid category as Newt Gingrich might say.
In fact, veteran campaign consultant Ed Rollins put it best on Fox News Sunday when he suggested facetiously that Harry Reid got the money for his Washington penthouse from prostitution and gambling. It’s certainly more plausible than Reid’s assertion about Romney.
It all goes to point out two things.
First, two years ago, Nevada re-elected a dolt who is a national embarrassment.
Second, elections clearly have consequences.
In our case, we get to tune in the news and see Harry Reid make a fool of himself—and by extension, us—on the national stage almost every day.
Folks, we’ve gone beyond calling the President of the United States a “loser” to a fourth grade class. We’ve gotten to the point where crazy Uncle Harry escaped from his basement apartment and they made him the third most powerful man in Washington. He’s a caricature of a Stiller and Meara routine. Perhaps writers for the King of Queens had Harry Reid as a model for Stiller’s crazy father.
How can Reid get away with it?
Simple. Nevada is superfluous to his career. He doesn’t live here any more and the fact is that Dean Heller is our only Senator.
Reid represents not the interests of Nevada but the interests of a small coterie of people who fancy themselves important in Washington DC.
How did this happen?
Well, Reid was everybody’s waterboy for most of his career. He was an equal opportunity spear carrier. He ran errands for Republicans and Democrats alike.
He was rewarded with jobs. Gaming Commission chair, Congressman, Senator.
One day, he outlasted everyone else and they made him Senate Minority Leader.
And, at that point, he no longer needed us.
That’s when the idiotic statements started. When he started turning on his state by doing things like crushing the construction of two coal-fired power plants near Ely and starting his own personal recession in White Pine County. When his mean streak and his ignorance combined to expose him as the mean and stupid spawn of Nevada.
But, there he is. (One wonders what those “Republicans for Reid” of 2010 think now.)
Most likely, we cannot get rid of him before his pathetic term comes to an end.
But we can remove him from a position to do much more damage by electing Romney and hoping our brethren in other states can change the composition of the Senate so he is no longer the Majority Leader. Neutering Harry is the best we can accomplish in the short term.
He will not move back to Nevada. He’s crapped on enough people in the state that there’s nothing for him here.
We could live with only having one Senator if only Harry would stop pretending he’s representing our interests.