Although Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been described as "soft-spoken" in the Huffington Post and "honorable" by CNN's Candy Crowley, even many liberals such as Jon Stewart have registered disgust over the wild charges that Reid has been hurling about an "unnamed" source telling him that presidential candidate Mitt Romney hasn't paid his income taxes for ten years. And now even the New York Times, in an article by Michael D. Shear and Richard A. Oppel, has noted the wild charges that Reid has tossed around in the past:
...Mr. Reid appears to be once again reprising a rhetorical technique he has mastered over 25 years in the Senate: repeatedly needling his Republican adversaries in ways that often push the boundaries of political propriety.
More like pushing the boundaries of political propriety and going completely over the edge. For some reason, which perhaps trained psychiatrists might be able to discern, Reid seems to have a very unhealthy obsession on the subject of Mitt Romney:
On a personal level, Mr. Reid has long been publicly contemptuous of Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee and a fellow Mormon. In 2008, he said Mr. Romney would have been “a tremendous drag” on the Republican ticket. Last year, he said Mr. Romney “doesn’t stand for anything.” And in the last month, he has said that Mr. Romney could not be confirmed as a dogcatcher or a cabinet secretary.
But Mr. Reid’s latest series of tart-tongued volleys — in which he cited an unnamed source who claims Mr. Romney has not paid taxes for a decade — have generated more than the usual outrage from his Republican colleagues and from Mr. Romney himself, who on Friday spent a second day condemning the remarks.
Apparently, this level of viciousness is nothing new for Reid:
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Reid repeatedly taunted Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, saying he should show leadership. He was quoted in a Las Vegas newspaper saying, “I can’t stand John McCain.”
In 2005, Mr. Reid said of President George W. Bush: “This guy is a loser.” He later apologized for that remark, but stood by another claim that Mr. Bush had been “a liar” while in office.
Mr. Reid called Senator Bill Frist, the Republican leader from 2003 to 2007, “amateurish,” and said in 2007 that Gen. Peter Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was “incompetent.” Mr. Reid once said that Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was “one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington.”
Of course, the big issue here isn't so much Reid's obvious derangement which surprises even writers at the Times but the fact that other people in the MSM such as Candy Crowley continue to defend his gutter attacks.
