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April 12, 2010
Sen. Harry Reid Seeking Votes On Hostile Turf
Protesters picket outside TJ's Pizza Shack in Fernley as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) makes a campaign stop
Sen. Harry Reid seeking votes on hostile turf
When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s campaign tour stopped at a Minden coffee shop last week, he met rancher Nancy Park, who leaned toward him and said: “I respectfully disagree with what you’re doing for Nevada.”
Ursula McManus, who stood next to Park, shook Reid’s hand silently, her lips frozen in a grimace.
At a Fernley pizza parlor, Robert Diffenderfer, 73, a veteran and biker, simply refused to shake the senator’s extended hand.
Elsewhere along the route, small bands of protesters held mocking signs. One dubbed the campaign trip the “throw Nevada under the bus tour.”
This is the political paradox the 70-year-old senator confronts as he begins to campaign for a fifth, and likely final, term in office: Though powerful in Washington, Reid is, to put it simply, widely despised back home.
Reid is hardly the first to rise nationally while alienating folks back home. It has happened to U.S. Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman and, most obviously, Tom Daschle, the former South Dakota senator and Senate majority leader who was unseated in 2004. The perception among the discontented constituents is usually the same: He’s no longer one of us, he’s one of them.
It hasn’t helped that while Nevada has been battered by the Great Recession, Reid has been living at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington.
The animosity of Republicans in the state’s conservative strongholds, like Minden and Fernley, is well known and likely insoluble. Reid, along with President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are the mighty triumvirate in Republican circles, the new axis of evil.
“Pinko Pinky Reid You’re Out,” read a banner on a horse trailer in the parking lot of the Elko Red Lion Hotel, calling Reid by his childhood nickname.
But even among Nevada Democrats, about a quarter are either undecided or supporting the Republican candidate. For liberals who know the old Western-moderate Reid, he’s not one of them even though his rise in the party has more closely associated him with the party’s liberal wing. Some moderate Democrats say he’s moved too far left.
For moderate and right-leaning independents, he has joined in on Washington bailouts and big progressive reforms when they prefer a smaller, more cautious government.
For the complete article click here.
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Wild Thing's comment........
Harry Reid is a vile, lying, traitorous pile of human excrement. Harry Reid is despised in Vegas.
I hope he deludes himself enough to stay in the race for the ass-kicking he so richly deserves.
.... Thank you Jim for sending this to me.
Posted by Wild Thing at April 12, 2010 06:47 AM
Comments
Come on Nevada, vote this commie out of office.
Posted by: TomR at April 12, 2010 10:23 AM
Yes, vote him out so he can be tried for treason!!!
I just heard the Marxist Clinton bitch's name mentioned as a potential for the SCOTUS.
Posted by: Jack at April 12, 2010 12:50 PM
Thanks Tom and Jack.
Jack, good grief that is all we need is Hillary in there.
Posted by: Wild Thing at April 13, 2010 12:36 AM
