Harry Reid's Revisionist History

Harry Reid took the floor of the United States Senate this past Monday and complained about the lack of republican support his Health Care Plan was receiving. 

Of course Harry made no mention of his "democrat only" closed door meetings while putting his plan together or his "democrat only" meeting with the President the other day when Obama stopped by Congress to rally his party members to finalize the plan.

But the Harry, either abetted by copious amounts of intoxicants or perhaps just plain mendacity, likened those republicans and others who oppose his Health Care Plan to those who, according to Reid, opposed an end to slavery... opposed women's right to vote ...and those who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

If Harry's remarks were meant to foster a spirit of bi-partisanship among his senate colleagues, he obviously has not read the book How to Make Friends and Influence People.

Additionally, Reid's grasp of American political history is also faulty as...

1.  Reid has obviously forgotten that Abolition was the cause upon which the Republican Party was founded, and that the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, is known today as the Great Emancipator.

2.  Harry also conveniently forgets that women already had the right to vote in many states, including Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and Idaho, before the passage of the 19th Amendment, and it was the former Republican president Teddy Roosevelt, running on the Bull Moose ticket in 1912 against both Taft (who had succeeded him) and the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, that made the right to vote for women part of its platform. It was the southern states, all controlled at the time by Democrats, which had adamantly opposed ratification each time it was proposed, starting in 1878. So, for that matter, did the Virginia-born southerner, Wilson, who largely ignored the issue until 1917, when suffragettes picketed the White House and even went on a hunger strike. In the end, Wilson used the pretext of World War I to get behind the 19th Amendment, which became law in 1919.

3.  Reid really shows his ignorance of our country's history with his assertion that republicans opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In fact, it was the Republicans who pulled President Johnson’s fat out of the fire, voting in greater percentages for passage than the Democrats.

Now one would think that such caustic falsehoods emenating from the Majority Leader of such an austere body as the United States Senate would get a mention in the main stream media but alas, all the objective journalists toiling for our nation's free press are too busy counting up and reporting on the ever growing number of Tiger Woods' mistresses.

Michael Walsh, writing for Andrew Breitbart's biggovernment.com wrote that...

One of the reasons the press is the only private institution explicitly protected

by the Constitution is that it is supposed to act on behalf of the people, keeping those in power both responsible and in check. Today’s media, however, has almost entirely

abandoned that ideal in favor of frank partisanship or, worse,

stories like this, that appear to have been written by somebody born yesterday

and too lazy to check even the simplest “fact.”

For once, I have to applaud Michael Steele, the chairman of the

Republican National Committee, who said:

“Having made this disgraceful statement on the floor of the United States Senate,

Mr. Reid should immediately apologize on the Senate floor to his colleagues,

to his constituents, and to the American people. If he is going to stand by these statements, the Democrats must immediately reconsider his fitness to lead them.”

Unfortunately, I won't be holding my breath waiting for Harry Reid to apologize for his ignorant statements and absurdly revisionist version of our nation's political history on the floor of the Senate, or for the mainstream press to report them, anytime soon.

I can only hope that the citizens of the great state of Nevada vote this disgraceful and sorry pretense of a United States Senator out of Office next November in the 2010 elections!

Peter J. Mahon