We dealt with Harry Reid's contemptible Obamacare comments yesterday, then followed-up by cataloguing the many ways in which his casual "all of them are untrue" smear was offensively false. On Twitter, I vented exasperation at the mainstream media -- which predictably overlooked the remarks -- and at the Republican Party, which seemed incapable of turning Reid's callous attack into a major political headache for Democrats:
How is it possible that the RNC/NRSC/NRCC/RGA haven't yet produced an instant attack ad re: @SenatorReid's flaming #Obamacare lie?
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 26, 2014
Some Senate Republicans did emerge to challenge Reid, but for the most part, the response from both the press and the GOP was...crickets. The muted "outcry" was woefully insufficient to turn this into the shinola-storm that Reid so richly earned; a massive wasted opportunity -- although there's still time to exact some political pain on Reid's party. Hammering home Democrats' imperious, mean-spirited, ideological, out-of-touch stance on healthcare remains the best path forward to displacing Reid as Senate Majority Leader. Fourteen Democrat-held seats are in play this cycle, of which the GOP must net six to win the chamber. The man who stands to take Reid's job at the Senate's helm is Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell. He appeared on The Kelly File last night to draw attention to, and refute, Reid's falsehoods:
"No amount of Harry Reid calling everybody a liar changes the facts...I think people are going to be twice as angry about it. To see the Majority Leader of the Senate calling them a liar, I think, is going to embolden more people to come forward. I don't think they're going to be intimidated by Harry Reid."
Reid, for his part, quasi-backtracked from his sweeping statement on Twitter:
I can't say that all of the Koch ads on Obamacare are deceptive, but the vast majority are. http://t.co/hCbWIBVND6
— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) February 26, 2014
He's pretending that his initial attack was only leveled against the Koch brothers (whom he's charmingly slimed as "un-American"), and he's downgrading his assertion from "all" of the accounts being "untrue" to the "vast majority" being "deceptive." He also doubled down on attacking the integrity and veracity of Julie Boonstra, a Michigan cancer patient who has accurately spoken out about the ways in which Obamacare has imposed new burdens on her care and finances.