Dingy Harry’s Long, Sordid History of Verbal Diarrhea

Harry Reid has a long, sordid history of obnoxious and offensive verbal diarrhea. It’s true that most people who spend any amount of time in front of a microphone will make the occasional verbal gaffe and often times it will be funny. But Dingy Harry’s gaffes are never funny.  They’re uniformly nasty and mortifying.

When he suggested that the horrific accident that killed eight Marines in Nevada, Monday was caused by Sequester cuts, Marines were livid.

A Marine Corps official told reporter Jim Miklaszewski at NBC that he considered Dingy’s words to be “nothing but pure political posturing on the backs of these fallen Marines.” Disgraceful.

Mark Levin unloaded on him on his show, Tuesday night.

But those who remember Reid’s borderline treasonous political posturing during the Iraq war, shouldn’t be surprised.

• He called President Bush a liar who betrayed Nevada and betrayed the country” in December of 2004.

• He called President Bush a “loser” to a captive audience, (high school kids) in a civics class a few months after his second inauguration.

• In April, 2007, he declared the Iraq War to be lost, before the surge was even fully operational. We would go on to win the war, proving Dingy’s  eulogy to be devastatingly premature.

• Last year, in one of the most egregious examples of  verbal diarrhea in political history, he told the Huffington Post that Romney’s “poor father must be so embarrassed about his son.” Reid then went on to claim, while providing no evidence,  that Romney went a decade without paying any taxes.

Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office. “Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying.

On the Senate floor two days after the Huffington Post story broke, Reid continued with his verbal antics and said “the word’s out that (Romney) hasn’t paid any taxes for ten years.  Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t.”  It is really odd that Reid argues that “the word is out” about a claim that he himself had made 48 hours earlier. Reid seems to be using himself as authority for declaring that “the word’s out” about a bogus claim that Romney dodged taxes for ten years.

Mitt Romney would go on to release enough of his taxes to prove that he had been paying them for the past ten years, demonstrating once again, that Dingy Harry is a contemptible liar. But as Hillary Clinton would say, “What difference does it make? The media has his back….even after slandering a Presidential candidate with spurious lies during the heat of an election – he is still the the Senate Majority Leader.

• In 2009, Sen. Reid Compared Obamacare Opponents To Supporters Of Slavery

• He called tea partiers “evil-mongers”.

• He expressed pleasure at the new Capitol Visitors Center because it meant he wouldn’t have to “smell the tourists” filling up the Capitol in the summertime.

“In the summertime, because (of) the high humidity and how hot it gets here, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol.”

• Reid also declared to the Reno Gazette-Journal in September of 2009 that Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death was “going to help” Democrats pass health care.

• He pronounced ObamaCare “The Most Important Thing We’ve Done For The Country And The World”

• In March of 2010, he cheerfully announced, “today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good.”

• He Threatened the Las Vegas Journal’s Director of Advertising at a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon.  While shaking his hand, he said “I hope you go out of business.”

• He described candidate Barack Obama as “light-skinned” with “no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.”

• He made this nasty and unsubstantiated  comment about Clarance Thomas: “I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written. I just don’t think that he’s done a good job as a Supreme Court justice.”

More foot-in mouth moments, via ABC News:

• ”You Know, Joe, I Can’t Stand John McCain.” (“Reid Shares Senate Ideas,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, 08/21/08)

• On Former Majority Leader Bill Frist: “I’ve Never Seen Such Amateurish Leadership.” (Jon Frandsen, “Senate GOP To Counter Dems’ Filibusters With 30-Hour Talkathon,” USA Today, 11/10/03)

• On General Peter Pace, Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff: “Incompetent.” (John Bresnahan, “Reid Labels Military Leader ‘Incompetent,’” The Politico, 06/14/07)

• On Alan Greenspan, Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman: “One Of The Biggest Political Hacks We Have In Washington.” (CNN’s “Inside Politics,” 03/03/05)

• On A Member Of The Press: “Reid told one reporter she should ‘watch the [Senate] floor more often. … You might learn something.’ … Reid asked the reporter if she ‘spoke English.’ ‘Turn up your Miracle Ear,’ Reid added.” (“Reid Flares Over Media Coverage Of Energy Proposals,” FoxNews.com, 07/24/08)

• On His Republican Colleagues:  President Bush’s “49 Puppets He Has Here In The Senate.” “Everyone within the sound of my voice should understand, if that comes to be, it can go to 16th and Pennsylvania Avenue because that is what President Bush–he is the man who is pulling the strings on the 49 puppets he has here in the Senate. That is too bad for the country.” (Sen. Reid, Congressional Record, Congressional Record, S.14731, 12/04/07)

• McCain An “Old” “Snake Oil” Salesman. “But John McCain has a vision too, which in fairness I must address. When doctors screen out the quack nostrums and phony remedies we call snake oil, they use two fundamental principles: the maxim ‘first, do no harm’ and the question ‘is it safe and effective?’ In Congress, as in medicine, when we are offered snake oil as a remedy for the nation’s energy ills … kindly old Doc McCain would like to sell it to you anyway.” (Sen. Reid, Remarks To The Democratic National Convention, 8/27/08)

Update: 

Dingy Harry’s Verbal Diarrhea Continues to Appall – Now He’s Calling Tea Partiers The Real Anarchists (May 2, 2013)

Harry Reid Finds ObamaCare Complaints Amusing – They Make Him Laugh (Video) (November 7, 2013)

Linked by Doug Ross, thanks!