VIA DC Examiner

harry-reid

“My staff tells me not to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway. In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it’s true. We have many bathrooms here, as you can see. Souvenirs are available.” – Harry Reid, 12/02/08

We have never been fans of Harry Reid around here, and seriously hope he’s defeated the next time he’s up for re-election (2010, we believe). It’s not the fact that he and Nancy Pelosi have failed to accomplish anything in the 2 years they’ve held Congress, but instead it’s always been something we’ve had a hard time nailing down, specifically, about this man.

Well, the article above nails it.

He’s a grade-A, no-class, SNOB.

Addressing the $621 million boondoggle that is the new Capital Visitors Center, Reid calls it money well spent, as he wont have to “smell the tourists” anymore. Apparently, the hot Washington summers and throngs of visitors from across the nation (and world) to the Capital offended the delicate sensibilities possessed by Reid (who we imagine was always the last boy picked for teams in gym class, offended back then by the rubbery smell of the dodge balls or the musk of the gym itself, no doubt).

This stuns us.

Because we love dodge ball, and think throngs of tourists headed to Washington to endure a boring tour of the capitol buildings is a GOOD THING, no matter what they smell like (the buildings, which smell like cheap government imitation Pinesol, or the families, which smell like people).

And, oddly enough, Reid’s olfactory snobbery is the sort of thing we long believed Republicans had a monopoly on (with their keeners senses of both class and smell) - looking down on regular Americans and believing their seats in the Senate were royal fiefdoms from which to lord over all us dirty, smelly country mice.

Two things happened this year to chance our perspective on all of this, and to further blur the clear delineation between the two major parties in our eyes:

(1) We traveled to a combined total of 27 states for Hillary Clinton and John McCain, going to places we never in our lives dreamed we’d go. Dubuque, Iowa. Kenosha, Wisconsin. Mineral City, Ohio. Middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania. In Iowa, in particular, we worked 8 weeks straight in rural areas for Hillary Clinton, knocking on the doors of rundown homes in the middle of long stretches of farm, separated by half hour drives to the nearest neighbor. Completely out of our urban chic comfort zones. And we were welcomed everywhere we went by the good, decent, hardworking people who lived there. Whether they supported Clinton or not, these people treated us kindly and, on bad days when we battled freezing rain and blizzards, most of them invited us into their homes and offered us towels to dry off with, hot chocolate or tea, and in a few cases, even pulled up chairs to the dining table and insisted we join them for dinner. It was amazing – so much so that we could never recount the full bredth and scope of this here. Campaigning for Hillary CHANGED US as people. Gone are the days of looking down on rural life, because we now have that personal connection to people in little towns and farms all throughout the midwest, in particular. So, when Harry Reid talks about not having to smell all the tourists who come to Washington anymore, the first thought in our heads is that he’s talking about all of the good people we met here and there through the course of the campaign. People who don’t wear fancy clothes or have a lot of money to travel, but who make one or two big trips in their lives, and one of those is to Washington to visit the nation’s capital.

We would be honored to smell these people any day of the week.  Come to Chicago if Harry Reid doesn’t want you in Washington because we have great affection for ALL AMERICANS who take their families on an adventure to go somewhere and see something, to experience something different and celebrate our history. That’s not the easiest thing for a family to do anymore, with the high cost of everything and the uncertainty of employment.

And Harry Reid should know better. He sits in that Senate to serve all those smelly people who come to Washington to pay him a visit — not lord over them.

And to be perfectly blunt, we’ve met Harry Reid before. And he doesn’t smell fresh as a daisy himself. The day we caught whiff of him he smelled of cheap cologne and that slightly spoiled, off-putting scent that lingers in the hallways of older nursing homes.

We’d take a gaggle of tourists from Iowa baking in the summer sun over Harry Reid any day.

(2) We used to see the Democrats as the party of the regular people and the Republicans as the party of the rich and big business, but we don’t believe those lines are as clear cut anymore. Some Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, will go to the mat for regular Americans. Clinton moderates will do that, and have done that, time and again. The far left of the Democratic party, ensconced in San Francisco with the Nancy Pelosis or self-serving in Chicago with the party machine here, don’t care about anyone who is not directly helping them. If you don’t live in a big city and have a lot of money to spread around, then you are not on their radar. This is more true now than ever, because Democrats believe they won in 2008 without having to rely on the working class, average Joes — the backbone of the Democratic Party — so why respect these people when overeducated liberals are the ones who know best?

All of this was on full display on May 31st, 2008 at the Democrats’ Rules & Bylaws Committee Meeting. The liberal elite held court in the luxurious hotel meeting rooms, under Donna Brazile’s direction, while regular working class blue collar types stood outside in the pouring rain screaming and yelling, drenched, taking a stand for regular voters and average Joes.

The swift and vicious attacks on Joe “the plumber” Wurzelbacher during the last days of the campaign, once again coming from this Democrat elite, drove all of this home. Democrats are not, at heart, automatically defenders of the people and champions of the little guy. SOME Democrats are, like Hillary Clinton, but so are some Republicans, like Sarah Palin. Those two might not agree on everything, but like good people of both parties, they do share a solid appreciation for the hardworking men and women of this nation who struggle to keep food on the table, let alone plan expensive vacations to Washington.

Democrats and Republicans both have the ability to look down on average Americans, like the “smelly tourists” that offended Harry Reid so much. We have both good and bad Senators in our Capital, divided amongst both parties. Harry Reid is one of the bad ones. He is a Democrat. We are allowed to say a Democrat like Harry Reid is bad. We are allowed to call Michelle Obama out on her diamond-dazzled inappropriate excess while millions of Americans are out of work. We are allowed to demand substantive plans to get this nation financially back on track, instead of the Hope! and CHANGE! malarkey we’ve been fed nonstop for two years.

This is not Versailles. Harry Reid and the Obamas believe it is. But they are wrong. Hopefully, in two years voters will send someone better than Reid to Washington in his place, so Harry Reid can join all those smelly tourists on the ground one day and see that he was a servant of the people, not master of any domain.