Remember the post-election buzz about how a struggle for control of the Republican Party had pitted those who wanted to appeal to a broader base against the kookwits who demanded that the party move somewhere to the right of, oh, Rush Limbaugh?
In a huge development in the NY-23 special election, Republican
candidate Dede Scozzafava has announced that she is suspending her
campaign, citing an inability to win in light of recent polls and a
lack of money -- leaving this race as a vote between Democrat Bill
Owens and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, and a strong
message that the Republican Party can no longer nominate moderate
candidates, or else face a right-wing revolt.
Your Gleaner suspects there is a good chance that Republican Party candidates in Nevada in 2010 will similarly have to demonstrate that they are every bit as misguided, angry, ignorant and paranoid as the birthers, teabaggers, shoeboxers and such who will be selecting the party's nominees. In other words: Go, Gibbons, go!
Muth himself can't join Republicans for Reid. As he will tell anyone who will listen, he left the party during the Bush-Cheney administration because all the tax cuts for the rich and regulatory neglect and recreational warmongering was too liberal for him.
And to be fair (but not balanced), when Nevada's answer to Ann Coulter made the case for Reid's reelection quoted above, he wasn't expressing his own sentiment (presumably) or those of his fellow wingnuts. He was describing the viewpoint of Nevada's gambling industry.
Then again... Bitchy Little Area Megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson, arguably the richest batshit crazy right-wing extremist in the world, finances rabid conservative front groups. And Fox News personality Steve Wynn has launched one of his famous charm offensives in the media -- except this time it's not to tout a "fresh and unique resort experience" or whatever but to warn everyone about all the socialism, all teabagger-like.
Maybe Muth was speaking for his fellow wingnuts after all.
In any case, Muth has hitched his wagon to Harry Reid -- or more accurately, the willingness of outraged paranoid white people the nation over to contribute American dollars to fund Muth's anti-Reid websites and PAC and general-purpose noisemaking. So it's a bit of a surprise to see Muth himself pointing out that "it's much better to have a Senate majority leader than a rookie Republican freshman" representing Nevada in the Senate, especially since Muth has spent most of the last several months struggling to contain his enthusiasm for GOP Senate candidate and train-wreck-in-waiting Sue Lowden.
Far -- far, far, far, far -- be it for your lowly Gleaner to presume to speak on behalf of Reid or the Reid campaign (a prospect no doubt unsettling to everyone involved). But in this one instance, if I may be so bold, I would venture to speculate that Reid appreciates and welcomes Muth's strong, gracious and certainly unexpected endorsement.
Guano crazy area radio lady Heidi Harris and her slimy conspiracy
theory about how that attempt to blow up Harry Reid's Oldsmobile back
in the day never really happened has been tidily unpacked here, here and here, and I've little to add.
Except what do we call Nevada's version of Orly Taintz,
along with Sue Lowden, Jim Gibbons, the commenters on the RJ's website
and whoever else buys into what to all intents and purposes amounts to
Nevada's answer to the birther movement? Bombers? Shoeboxers?
Or, since they seem to be contending that the attempt to blow up the
Reid family station wagon was but a comical thing that never could have
exploded, duds? Or maybe dudders?
Nearly 18 months after the
Republican state convention was dramatically aborted after a contingent
of Ron Paul supporters took control, a missing box of uncounted
delegate ballots has been discovered and will be counted on Friday.
Aborted? That doesn't sound very Republican.
The mildly amusing Paultardian antics likely to ensue as a result of this development notwithstanding, the more relevant (yes, low bar indeed) point is that the state convention was managed, and the box of uncounted ballots mysteriously vanished, under the able direction of then state GOP chair Sue Lowden, who now thinks she should be in the U.S. Senate.
Seems like a perfectly good idea. Quick, competent action on constituent service requests is an outdated concept, anyway.
Meantime, Nevada Republicans should keep searching the nooks and crannies of the Peppermill in Reno, where the long lost GOP convention ballots had been hiding and where, evidently, democracy goes to die. Maybe that's where Saddam hid the WMD.
Are you a liberal? Then you'll be pleased to know that when Harry Reid decided to put a public option in the Senate health care bill, he was pandering to you!
For Reid, it was an admission of the formidable power of liberal
interest groups. He had been the target of a petition drive and other
forms of pressure to bring the public option to the floor, and Monday's
move made him an instant hero on the left. Americans United for Change
hailed him for refusing "to buckle in the face of withering pressure
from the big insurance companies." MoveOn.org admired his "leadership
in standing up to the special interests."
Reid, facing a difficult reelection contest next year at home in
Nevada, will need such groups to bring Democrats to the polls if he is
to survive.
Of course, a compelling piece of evidence against the Reid-panders-to-left scenario quoted above is that it is being propounded by the Post's Dana Milbank who routinely scores an eight or nine out of ten on that publication's Columnists Chock Full o' Shit Meter. But broken clock, twice a day etc.
Besides, all we've been hearing for months, including from the likes of the Washington Post, is that boy oh boy Harry Reid has to pander to the right if he's going to have a chance to win reelection. So it is refreshing to see someone in the mainstream media suggest, for a change, that Reid must appeal to the left if he hopes to win.
(Of course if his opponent's handlers are unable to identify a consistently effective cocktail of mood stabilizers, that opponent's candidacy will almost certainly implode -- on TV, preferably -- and this whole Reid reelection thing might end up going a lot more smoothly than anticipated.)
Anyway, no sooner had Reid become, as Milbank put it, a "hero on the left" then people started floating the theory that it was all a hoax for show -- that Reid announced he'd put the public option in the bill only so he can tell the left that he did, that he knows it won't go anywhere in the Senate, and that he fully expects and intends to pull back to President Snowe's "trigger" tomfoolery later.
Can you believe that someone would think Nevada's senior senator capable of such cynical jiggery-pokery?
Eh, to quote the Petticoat Junction song, "lots of curves, you bet, and even more when you get" the bill out to the Senate floor (and even Lieberscum says he'll vote for that). So Reid's enigmatic ways notwithstanding -- and underscoring what a waste of time the whole Baucus debacle was -- the nation's discussion about health care reform may be just getting started. Yay.
For instance, debate over Ron Wyden's amendments (assuming Reid allows them) should be particularly edifying:
Unless you've been bedridden and slipping miserably in and out of consciousness with the pig flu, you will have noticed that erstwhile dashing and innovative tourism magnate Steve Wynn has become a cranky old man yelling at everyone to get off his lawn.
Most recently, Wynn took the crazy to the Las Vegas Sun, where he reiterated complaints made on the Glenn Beck Network and elsewhere about Obama pushing all the socialism and how government is icky icky icky while the blessed private sector is super holy and stuff like that.
Obama and the Democrats "are trying to change the basic fabric of American life," Wynn said. But he didn't mean it in a nice way.
"The environment in China is much more free than here," Wynn added, raising the tantalizing prospect that Sarah Palin will team up with the aforementioned Mr. Beck to lead millions of angry fearful wingnuts to Chinese urban-industrial centers where they can finally work as long and as hard as they are told without being burdened by pesky environmental, labor and safety regulations. (An accompanying Sun story, btw, explains how government is so evil and destructive that even Wynn's magnificent success depends on it.)
Meantime, it turns out that not every billionaire darling of the private sector is an unmitigated egomaniac convinced of his own superiority over mere mortals who warns that America must heed his dire warnings -- or else! -- and blithely thinks he owes no debt to society for his success.
"Basically most of the rich people in the United States ... they would not have done quite as well if they'd been in Bangladesh or someplace like that. I mean they may think they did it all by themselves, but the society has done an awfully lot for them. And if you get the chance to live very rich in this society, in my view you really ought to have a taxation system but you also ought to have a personal values system where you believe that a lot of that ought to go back to the people who got the short straws in life."
Oh yeah, Warren Buffet? Well if you're such a smarty boots how come you don't have a hotel named after you in Las Vegas? Huh?
Gracias, Harry, for deciding that the health care bill you send to the Senate floor will include a public option.
The bit about not bothering to ask the Congressional Budget Office to waste time doing the math on Her Royal Excellency Olympia Snowe's "trigger" plan is a particularly nice touch.
If the bill becomes law it will mark much-needed, long-overdue and meaningful reform of the nation's failed health care system (an important step on America's inevitable march to Medicare for All). Less importantly but of local interest, it will figure as the most substantial achievement of Reid's career.
And as an entertainingly speculative aside, the compromise provision allowing states to opt-out of the public option will give Jim Gibbons, Brian Sandoval and every other Republican running for state-level offices one more constructive policy that they can be against in 2010. The majority of Nevada voters -- including the much-cherished all-important independents -- want a public option. Can't wait to hear Sandoval & Co. argue that Nevada should opt out.
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