海角大神

During the height of the 2012 presidential campaign, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, who聽, made several outlandish claims regarding Republican nominee Mitt Romney that became the focus of a media firestorm. It all began in late July of that year, when Reid claimed in an interview that a source he would not name had聽聽As I noted at the time, even though Romney had not yet released his 2011 taxes or other information regarding previous tax years,聽聽For one thing, as, it simply was not possible that anyone who might have been inclined to release information like this to Reid would have had access to Romney鈥檚 tax information for the previous decade. More importantly, the entire tale that Reid was telling sounded so utterly absurd that there was no reason to believe it was true and that either Reid was letting himself get duped by a source who was telling him what he wanted to hear, or there never really was a source at all and Reid was making the whole thing up. Despite these questions about his claims, though,聽聽and it wasn鈥檛 until聽聽that we learned, not surprisingly, that the claims Reid was making were utterly false.

Despite the fact that it was essentially proven that Reid was lying, the senator from Nevada聽聽that he has聽

鈥淩omney didn鈥檛 win, did he?鈥� Reid said in response to Bash鈥檚 question of whether he regretted what he had said about Romney.

Think about that logic for a minute. What Reid is saying is that it鈥檚 entirely immaterial whether what he said about Romney and his taxes was true. All that mattered was that Romney didn鈥檛 win.

:

, who isn鈥檛 exactly a right-winger, finds the entire thing appalling:

Where to begin?

How about with the fact that this all-means-justify-the-ends logic 鈥� assuming the end is your desired one 鈥� is absolutely toxic for politics and, more importantly, democracy. 聽(Worth noting: Reid is far from the only one who practices this sort of thinking; it鈥檚 the rule rather than the exception in political Washington, where winning 鈥� no matter the cost 鈥� is the only goal that matters.) If you can lie 鈥� or, at a minimum, mislead based on scant information or rumor 鈥� then anything is justified in pursuit of winning. This sort of 鈥渢he winners make the rules鈥� approach is part of the broader partisan problem facing Washington and the polarization afflicting the nation more broadly. There is no trust between the two parties because they believe 鈥� and have some real justification for believing 鈥� that the other side will say and do literally anything to win.

Think about Reid鈥檚 statement in another context. I have two little kids. What if I told my son, who has just started playing soccer, that his only aim was to win the game 鈥� no matter how he accomplished that goal. 聽After all, it鈥檚 not cheating unless someone can prove it, right?

Would anyone think that was either (a) good parenting or (b) broadly beneficial for society? No. That is the same logic Reid is applying here, but because we are all inured to the horribleness that is modern political strategy, people barely bat an eye. No, politics ain鈥檛 beanbag. I get that. But allowing elected officials to say anything they want about people running for office 鈥� and requiring zero proof in order to report those claims 鈥� seems to be a bridge too far.

Some will accuse Cillizza of engaging in pearl clutching here, and I鈥檓 certainly no Pollyanna when it comes to politics and the lies, misrepresentations, and dirty tricks that candidates and their surrogates engage in to win elections. However, I believe he has a point here and the extent to which Reid is likely to be forgiven for what he did and, indeed, lauded by people on both sides of the aisle as his time in the Senate comes to an end is really rather extraordinary. For one thing, the fact that Reid made these accusations about Romney not at some campaign rally somewhere, but, on at least one occasion, while standing on the floor of the Senate makes the acts he engaged in seem all the more egregious. We expect our representatives to say ridiculous things at campaign rallies, but when they are speaking as legislators there should be some higher expectations that they are expected to meet and, at the very, least, they shouldn鈥檛 just be patted on the back and sent on their way when they are blatantly caught fabricating allegations about a candidate from the opposing party. As I said when this story first broke, Reid鈥檚 claims were ridiculous from the beginning. Given the nature of his investments and income, it was to be expected that Romney鈥檚 effective tax rate would be lower than other people, but Reid was claiming more than that. According to Harry Reid, Mitt Romney didn鈥檛 pay income taxes at all, and he never really made it clear whether he meant that Romney was able to take advantage of tax laws that reduced his effective tax rate to zero, which is so close to being impossible that it was hard to believe anyway, or whether he was accusing Romney of breaking the law and just not paying taxes, an assertion that was absurd on its face. Reid鈥檚 supporters, of course, will say that he was merely passing along something a 鈥渟ource鈥� told him, but given the outlandishness of the claim it鈥檚 entirely plausible that there never was a source and that Reid made the whole thing up. Reid is not an unintelligent man, after all, and if some person he didn鈥檛 know made a claim like this, one would have assumed he would have tried to verify it rather than just blindly repeating it. In any case, since we learned that Reid鈥檚 claims were, in fact, false, the suspicion that he was lying the whole time is certainly not an unreasonable one. Have we really become so cynical about our political system that we鈥檙e willing to sit back and accept it when a politician makes a claim that is so obviously nonsensical? If that鈥檚 the case, then we are in far deeper trouble than I鈥檝e previously imagined.

As he approaches his retirement in December 2016, Reid will no doubt be lauded by members of his own party, by at least some people on the other side of the aisle, and no doubt by the president of the United States. None of them will ever make mention of Reid鈥檚 obvious fabrications, the irresponsible nature of his claims, or the fact that he has no regrets for what he did. And that鈥檚 a problem.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.