SenHarryReidAndOtherPeoplesTaxes < PDF version
During the Presidential campaign of 2012, when former Governor Mitt Romney was running against President Barack “I lied, period” Obama, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), then the Majority Leader of the U. S. Senate, made a speech on the Senate floor 31 Jul 2012 in which he announced, based on confidential sources, that Romney had not paid income taxes for over ten years. Reid said, “Let him [Romney] prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t”.
In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on 30 Mar 2015, Reid was asked about those comments and admitted that he knew they were false when he said it. Reid’s justification to Bash was, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”
This is known as “good old-fashioned Democratic hardball politics”. But it is more than the blatant hypocrisy or more evidence of the high level of partisanship or the “anything to win is justified” attitude that is most damaging to political discourse in America. The most damaging thing to America is that this episode is one more piece of evidence reinforcing the opinion that “all politicians are lying about everything all the time”. The Republicans have done similar things, although not quite as blatantly. If that’s the kind of America the two main political parties want, by all means they shall have it. But we the people better not hear any whimpering from politicians or their hacks about the public’s general lack of trust in government; or more accurately, the public’s active level of suspicion and distrust in everything said and done by any elected official.
The politicians and their hacks will have created it, lock, stock, and barrel. And they will enjoy it.
