Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would appear to have enough troubles to deal with in this world, but he has at least one adversary in the hereafter as well. Charlotte McCourt of Pahrump, Nevada, died last week at 84 and her obituary in the Las Vegas Review Journal noted that she had been active in her community and "assisted in many political figures’ campaign efforts." One of those was the campaign to elect Reid to the Senate, an effort, Mrs. McCourt later regretted, according to her children.
"We believe that Mom would say she was mortified to have taken a large role in the election of Harry Reid to U.S. Congress," the obituary concluded. "Let the record show Charlotte was displeased with his work. Please, in lieu of flowers, vote for another more worthy candidate."
No doubt some will think it in poor taste to fire a political salvo at the end of an obituary, but Democrats, having elected a dead Missouri governor to the U.S. Senate in 2000 and having made a political circus of a memorial service for Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone two years later, are not in the best position to make the argument that politics should stop at the cemetery’s edge.
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Reid is in a tough race for reelection this year, with the latest Rasmussen Poll showing the four-term Democrat trailing Republican challenger Sharron Angle, with Angle getting the support of 46 percent of those surveyed to 43 percent for Reid. Angle’s latest TV ad blames Reid for the myriad economic woes in Nevada where unemployment is over 14 percent, the highest in the nation. Reid and the Democratic National committee are portraying Angle as an extremist, suggesting statements made by the political rookie show her to be something of a loose cannon. As the neoconservative Weekly Standard points out, they are not above stretching a point well beyond reason to do it.
"While ‘death panels’ were nowhere to be found in the health insurance reform bill, it looks like Sarah Palin can find a one-woman version of one in Nevada where Sharron Angle thinks people who criticize her political positions should die," the DNC said in a statement. Angle did say that three-term Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, recently rejected for reelection by delegates at the party’s state convention, has "outlived his usefulness." That may be a violation of the Reagan 11th Commandment ("Thou shalt speak no ill of thy fellow Republican"), but it is hardly a call for marching the 76-year-old lawmaker to the local euthanasia center.
The Nevada race has received, and will continue to receive, a lot of attention this year, given Reid’s position as a politically vulnerable majority leader and Angle’s standing as a colorful newcomer. A recent George Will column described her as one who loves her ten grandchildren even more than her .44 Magnum. Conservative voters, even those who have neither guns nor grandchildren, may find that combination charming.
Photo: AP Images
