[Mb-civic] The Baddest Man in D.C. Harry who? GOP will tell you. JONATHAN CHAIT

[Michael Butler]

latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-chait11feb11.story
JONATHAN CHAIT
The Baddest Man in D.C.
Harry who? GOP will tell you.
JONATHAN CHAIT

February 11, 2005

At this very moment, there are millions of conservatives across the land
who, unbeknown to them, will soon develop an intense personal loathing for
Nevada Sen. Harry Reid. The process, inevitable as the changing of the
seasons, began on Monday night when the Republican National Committee
distributed a 15-page memo accusing Reid, the chief Senate Democrat, of
various transgressions.

It's working. Conservative talking heads have already begun expounding upon
Reid's treacherous ways. Though many rank-and-file Republicans may have no
strong feelings about Reid today, and some have never even heard of him, it
won't be long before the very mention of the words "Harry Reid" will send
GOP partisans into paroxysms of rage.

The need for the campaign against Reid is clear enough. Unlike the icy
Hillary Rodham Clinton or the hotheaded Howard Dean, Harry Reid does not
easily lend himself to hostile caricature. He is anti-abortion and anti-gun
control. As the New York Times reported, Reid "is appearing more often on
national television, where strategists in both parties say he comes off as
reasonable and evenhanded."

Republicans carried out a nearly identical operation to drive up antagonism
against Tom Daschle, the previous Democratic Senate leader, who was also
inconveniently mild-mannered. Republicans sent out talking points, and in
short order conservatives everywhere found themselves deeply vexed by the
previously inoffensive, low-profile South Dakota senator. Rush Limbaugh,
taking the demonization campaign a tad too literally, began calling Daschle
"El Diablo." Perhaps now, with the devil himself already having been used,
Limbaugh is thumbing through "Paradise Lost" looking for lesser satanic
figures after which to name Reid. (My money's on "Beelzebub.")

It's entirely natural that Republicans would have no love for a leading
Democrat. And there's nothing wrong with hating a particularly loathsome
member of the other party, or even of your own party. I've done plenty of
both myself. The trouble is that this particular campaign is highly
dishonest.

A headline on the RNC document, for instance, calls Reid the "Chief Democrat
Obstructionist." Now, "obstructionist" has a very specific meaning. An
obstructionist doesn't merely try to stop legislation he disagrees with. If
that were the case, every minority leader in a legislative body would be
guilty of obstructionism. Obstructionists try to stop any legislation from
passing, good or bad, merely to prevent the majority party from claiming
credit. During the first two years of the Clinton administration, Republican
Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole kept setting his preconditions higher and
higher until eventually he renounced his own healthcare bill. Now that's
obstructionism.

What act of actual obstructionism has Reid committed? The charges center on
his current opposition to privatizing Social Security. To suggest he has
flip-flopped, the RNC quotes Reid as saying in 1999 "most of us have no
problem with taking a small amount of the Social Security proceeds and
putting it into the private sector." Fox News apparatchiks Brit Hume and
Sean Hannity have trumpeted this as evidence that Reid has reversed himself
out of expediency.

But the plan Reid praised, which Clinton floated five years ago, was not
privatization. It called for the government to invest a portion of the
Social Security trust fund in stocks. Unlike President Bush's plan, it
wouldn't have exposed individuals to any greater risk. Nearly all
privatization advocates opposed the Clinton plan, and nearly all advocates
of the Clinton plan oppose privatization.

The RNC also notes that in 1999 Reid took a trip to Chile to examine its
privatized pension system. In fact, the high-minded explanation for Reid's
trip is that he wanted to learn about privatization, but he wasn't persuaded
that it would work in the United States. The low-minded explanation is that
he wanted a free junket to Chile. Either way, there's no evidence he's
changed his stance, let alone that he's done so for partisan reasons.

The real reason Republicans object to Reid is that he's a Democrat who
disagrees with key points of Bush's agenda. Of course, you can't very well
whip the Fox News audience into a lather by pointing at Reid and shouting:
"He's a Democrat, and he's voting against us! The nerve!" Hence the need for
insults like "obstructionist" and "partisan" ‹ another favorite term of
abuse against both Reid and Daschle ‹ which are merely ways of making
membership in the other party sound like some kind of affront.

This kind of transparent propaganda is, sadly, a normal function of
political parties. But if you get gulled into believing it, or repeating it,
you're either a dupe or a partisan hack.

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