When I heard that Harry Reid (D-NV) was to be the new Senate Minority Leader, replacing outgoing Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD), I didn’t think a whole lot about it. I didn’t know much about Reid one way or the other, so whatever.
Well, damn. The guy’s technically a Democrat, but with his voting record, it’s looking a lot like a repeat of 2000. (You might remember that as the year that the Democratic Party formally disbanded, until its 2003 spine implant, courtesy of Howard Dean.) This guy has a 29% rating from NARAL, voted against putting debt reduction before tax cuts, voted to ban flag burning, has a 40% rating from the ACLU, voted to limit death penalty appeals, voted for the Bush energy policy, and voted to remove funding for renewable energy research.
Now, to be fair, he does have a 91% rating from the NEA, an 84% from the League of Conservation Voters, a 16% from the Christian Coalition, an 88% from the American Public Health Association and a 100% from the AFL-CIO. It’s not like the guy is totally unqualified to be a member of the Democratic Party.
Still, appointing Harry Reid to be the Senate Minority Leader strikes me as a huge, huge concession to the Republican Party. If they play nice, then that’s great. But on the overwhelming chance that the Republicans steamroll right over the Democrats on Capitol Hill, this will just be the latest in a series of stupid mistakes by the party.