Harry Reid survives — and more election reaction
To the editor:
Who knew our Sen. Harry Reid was such a madcap, insisting that the Republicans have to cooperate with him and the Democrats after they took over the House of Representatives and narrowed the balance in the Senate in the recent election.
It often seems his most recent memory is his long-ago hardscrabble life in Searchlight, which might explain his failure to acknowledge the significance of recent and current events, especially the results of the election.
There seems to be a disconnect from reality with Sen. Reid. How else to explain his unfathomable support for policies that have made the United States a debtor nation of unimaginable proportions and inhibited the economy with trillions of dollars in debt for programs meaningful mostly to him and his circle.
How can he continue to support the forthcoming cost of ObamaCare to businesses and working individuals when his home state already leads the nation in unemployment, bankruptcies and foreclosures? How can he believe that the wild spending involved with ObamaCare will cure debt or, for that matter, have any effect on the health of more than 300 million people? I can answer that: It's not debt or health that's important, it's the billions of dollars that will flow to Washington, and there isn't a chance in a million that their projections of cost containment will work, and much of the money will go to programs having little to do with health -- think Social Security and its laughable trust fund.
How can Sen. Reid look any child or parent in the eye when his home state is at the bottom of scholastic rankings, e.g., graduation rates and quality of education. I can answer that: He doesn't have to. He only has to look at the children or parents who reside at the Ritz-Carlton or who work there. The old curmudgeon doesn't have to look at the tourists, including children, who parade through Washington, but he can smell them -- doesn't anyone remember his comment about that?
Sen. Reid doesn't have to concern himself with the military -- why should he? Remember "The war is lost" and "Bush is a loser"?
Harry Reid came back to Nevada to shake and grin, to remind us of his poor-boy childhood in Searchlight and to ask Hispanics how they could possibly vote Republican. We didn't rid ourselves of him through the election process, but the effect is the same. While we will still get the frequent mailed-in malapropism, he will go back to his fancy digs and office in Washington and we won't see him again until the next election.
Vernon Clayson
Las Vegas
Out of touch
To the editor:
How could the Review-Journal be so wrong? In your Nov. 2 editorial, you painted Harry Reid as a loser and on the wrong path. You pointed out how wrong his policies are and gave him no chance to win the election.
But your polls were 100 percent wrong, and instead of losing by 4 or 5 percentage points, he won by 5 percentage points.
Your polls were also wrong in the Joe Heck-Dina Titus race.
My advice to you is to stop wasting money with Mason-Dixon polling and find another.
You opined Sharron Angle as "what Nevada needs." Well, my friends at the Review-Journal, I was overjoyed that we had more rational voters with the common sense and intelligence to identify Sharron Angle as a dangerous extremist with little common sense and hardly any regard for our less fortunate citizens. This election showed you are not a paper in touch with the local majority or a newspaper of the future.
Kenneth Reed
Henderson
No hope
To the editor:
Tuesday night Harry Reid said, "Today, Nevada chose hope over fear." That statement could not be further from the truth.
In every political ad for Sen. Reid there was little talk of hope or accomplishments, but there was talk of "fear" of what would happen if Sharron Angle were elected.
With his half-truths and exaggerations of anything she said, you would have thought she was a racist woman who wanted to delete seniors, torture women, get rid of education and destroy America. When the truth is Ms. Angle is exactly what Americans wanted ... an honest non-politician whom you know will not get caught up in the D.C. political game. You will always know exactly where she stands and you can count on her to vote that way.
In the years I have known her I have found her to be sincere, kind and caring, not only about America, but the people who live here.
Nevada had a chance to elect a genuine woman to represent Nevada and it is sad that she lost to one of the dirtiest, most self-centered politicians America has seen.
Yes, Sen. Reid won. But did America?
Jim Blockey
Las Vegas
Slip through
To the editor:
Let's be honest with ourselves about the recent election. The Republican Party lost the U.S. Senate race for one reason and one reason only: The wrong person was nominated.
For certain, Sue Lowden, and most likely Danny Tarkanian, could have taken Sen. Reid out. Instead, they nominate some far right-wing lunatic who just really turned off a lot of voters.
Sorry GOP, but you have no one to blame but yourselves. Your No. 1 goal was to defeat Harry Reid and you let the perfect opportunity slip right through your fingers.
Tom Hicks
Las Vegas
House hearings
To the editor:
The Republicans haven't been elected to the House majority 24 hours when they are indicating that once they take the majority they will initiate investigations against the Obama administration. For what, I don't have a clue, but wake up Democrats. Use your subpoena power during this lame duck period to initiate investigations against the former Bush administration for war crimes.
To name a few counts: lying to the American public and creating a threat that didn't exist to go to war and torture, which Bush admitted he authorized to Matt Lauer in a TV interview; contractor abuses and profiteering (remember Dick Cheney was on the board of directors of Halliburton); outing CIA agent Valerie Plame; and the list goes on.
Maybe if the Democrats get a spine, the American public will respect them again and they'll win in 2012.
Scott Harman
Las Vegas
'Simpsons' lesson
To the editor:
Letter writer Randall Buie argued against his own opinion on Thursday. He referenced the episode of "The Simpsons" where Homer becomes sanitation engineer and ruins the city.
Mr. Buie failed to mention how Homer won, or how he ruined the city. He won by capitalizing on people's laziness, promising to provide every creature comfort he could think of. His campaign slogan was, "Can't someone else do it?"
After the election, he wasted his department's annual budget in weeks.
So Homer pandered to demands for entitlements and then bankrupted his administration. Mr. Buie, exactly which party did you think Homer represented again?
D'oh, indeed.
Jamie Huston
North Las Vegas
Wrong person
To the editor:
In response to Steve Gammell's Thursday letter questioning the sanity of Harry Reid voters:
I voted for Harry Reid and I am quite sane, I can assure you. I am a registered independent and I choose candidates not by party but what I perceive to be their ability and effectiveness. The Republicans chose an inexperienced, radical and, I'm sorry to say, somewhat intelligence-challenged candidate to oppose Sen. Harry Reid.
Perhaps I would not have voted for Sen. Reid had the Republican Party offered me a candidate with an intelligent, broad-based and rational agenda. They didn't, and they got the results they deserved.
In two years, the GOP will have a chance to elect a senator again, so think carefully when you choose that person.
Michael R. Stilley
Mesquite
Who's biased?
To the editor:
Once again the Las Vegas Sun criticizes the Review- Journal for bias ("Polling hasn't changed with electorate," Nov. 4).
Preceding the election, the Sun endorsed 47 Democrats and 5 Republicans for a 9.6 percent Republican endorsement. The Review-Journal endorsed 31 Republicans and 20 Democrats for a Democrat endorsement of 39.2 percent. Which paper is more partisan?
Several days prior to the election, the Sun letters to the editor were totally in support of the Democrats, whereas the Review-Journal had a fairly even split, and the same was true for the paper's columnists.
If I want to know both sides of an issue, I read the Review-Journal, and if I have any time left I may read the Sun for entertainment, but not to increase my knowledge of the issues.
Bob Gatewood
Henderson
