Harry Reid admitted this week what most honest and informed people already knew: he flat out lied in 2012 about Mitt Romney not paying his income taxes for ten years. Reid gave an ends justifies the means explanation to CNN's Dana Bash namely that, hey, it worked because Romney didn't win the presidential election. In 2012 a columnist in Reid's home state of Nevada, Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun wrote a column critical of Reid's attack on Romney based on no facts. The problem was that his column was killed by his editor, Brian Greenspun.
So three years later, now that Reid has admitted to his contemptible mendacity, Ralston is back with the column killed by Greenspun which he has today published on his website. Below are some of the excerpts but first Ralston delivers a blast at Greenspun for covering for Reid via censorship:
Now that CNN's Dana Bash has found Harry Reid to be unrepentant about his Mitt Romney tax lies, it's finally time to publish a column I wrote contemporaneously with the Nevada senator's McCarthy-like tactic during the 2012 campaign. The column was never published because Las Vegas Sun Editor Brian Greenspun attempted to protect his friend, Reid, from the criticism.
I never wrote for the Sun again.
Thankfully, Ralston is now able to write on the web, free from censorship. Here are excerpts of his column that Brian Greenspun felt compelled to block from publication in the Las Vegas Sun:
Reid will do whatever it takes to win, no matter the battlefield, and what his utterly execrable approach with Romney indicates is that after 25 years, we still don’t know where he draws the line – if indeed he draws one at all.
Reid is both fearless and shameless, a formidable combination for his adversaries, especially now that he has nothing to lose. I’m not convinced this is his last term (I consider it unlikely), but 2016 is a long time from now. And this surely won't hurt Reid among his Democratic caucus, whose members surely marvel that their leader is willing to say things they only muse about. And judging by the mindless, seal-like behavior of many Democratic partisans – you go, senator! – Reid’s “I heard this from someone but I can’t tell you who” approach is only revving up the base.
Folks, these are not the rantings of an idiot savant, but the actions of a man with two, contradictory sides. Reid can be the frothing attack dog willing to call a president a “liar” and a “loser” just as easily as he can be the consummate inside Club of 100 player able to stroke Republicans to cut deals across the aisle. But more to the point here, Reid is the very careless pol with the media, regularly making intemperate remarks that make his staff cringe, but he’s also the coolly calculating pol who always – always -- has a method to his apparent madness.
Reid knows EXACTLY what he is doing on the Romney tax returns – trying to create so much pressure that the candidate has to release more of his tax records. Whether or not Reid really has an “extremely credible source” who told him Romney did not pay taxes for 10 years is not the point.
...It’s one thing to use every trick in the book to win a campaign or to carelessly spout invective about other public figures. But it’s quite another thing for one of the most powerful Democrats in the country to make serious assertions about a Republican presidential candidate, without any proof and without a named source. Sometimes the ends do not justify the means, even in the political swamp. Someone needs to draw the line for Reid since he is so unable to draw one for himself.
Exit question: Which Nevada senator is sleazier; Pat Geary or Harry Reid?
