Giving the U.S. Senate Majority Leader a taste of his own medicine, National Review editor Rich Lowry‘s latest column invites Harry Reid to disprove the notion that he’s beneath contempt.
The Nevada Democrat maintains that Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes for ten years. Reid’s charge is an intellectual and moral mess that makes the notorious question “When did you stop beating your wife?” seem rigorous by comparison.
Reid has a super-double-secret source he says is an investor in Bain who called to tell him, “Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for ten years.” Ordinarily, before repeating such a charge publicly, one would want a little proof, especially given that there’s no more reason that a Bain investor would be familiar with Mitt Romney’s tax returns than a Facebook investor would be familiar with Mark Zuckerberg’s returns.
Harry Reid, though, is liberated from all such mundane evidentiary standards. Not to mention logic. His statements on Romney’s tax returns lurch from outlandish premise to completely unconnected conclusion. Listening to Reid try to make an argument is like watching the late besotted journalist Hunter Thompson try to solve a quadratic equation while high on acid.
The only thing that holds together Reid’s jumbled case is the vein of idiot malice that runs through the whole rancid thing. …
… Reid isn’t a blogger, a cable host, or even a Senate backbencher. He’s the highest-ranking elected Democrat in Congress. But his station doesn’t mean anything to him; he’s a hack at heart.