Harry Reid drops the ‘L’ word — again

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid has never really had a filter; his staff is never more nervous than when he’s speaking to reporters. But now that Reid has announced he’s not running again, whatever impulse control he once had is totally gone.

It’s all Reid unplugged, all the time.

For those of us who’ve covered Reid for a long time, this is nothing new. But journalists outside Nevada are getting glimpses that are going to make headlines from now until Reid finally cleans out his ornate leadership offices in the Capitol building.

The latest? In an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, Reid was asked about the rapidly forming field of Republican presidential candidates that now includes fellow U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Rand Paul, R-Ky. and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and may soon grow to embrace former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. What does Reid think?

“I don’t really care,” Reid replied. “I think they’re all losers.”

Ouch, baby.

Two things about this, however. For one, it’s just untrue. Say whatever you want about them, but they are not losers. Paul and Cruz won their elections to the Senate, and Bush won multiple terms as his state’s chief executive. Huckabee was a winner as governor of Arkansas, but, in fairness, he did try and fail to win the Republican nomination for president in 2008. So maybe he’s a little bit of a loser.

But this isn’t the first time that Reid has dropped the “L” word. Remember back in 2005, when Reid told reporters gathered at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas that then-President George W. Bush was a “loser”?

“The man’s father is a wonderful human being. I think this guy is a loser,” Reid said at the time. Reid called the White House to apologize after he knew his remarks were going to be published.

Now, even if you accept the idea that Bush didn’t really win the 2000 election, and that he was handed the presidency by a bad ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, the fact is, Bush had won re-election in 2004, and thus, by definition, was not a “loser.”

In fact, is seems “loser” is what the Mormon Reid uses in place of swear words that the rest of us might employ, a verbal shorthand for “jerk” or something stronger. Like the time he started to say “crock of…” on the Senate floor, but instead of finishing with a crude word for feces, replaced it with “potato soup.” Or in the same Harwood interview where he called McConnell “a lump of coal.” (In a classic Reid maneuver, he prefaced that by saying, “I don’t mean to be mean-spirited, but…” Sure, of course, McConnell is a lump of coal, but in a good way!)

The “loser” remark comes as Reid is the focus of scrutiny for his claims during the 2012 election that Mitt Romney paid no income taxes for years, remarks for which Reid has refused to apologize, although he has since acknowledged that Romney did pay. And nobody with hearing, a newspaper subscription or a TV can be ignorant of Reid’s high-volume attacks on the “un-American” Koch Brothers.

The second thing to remember is this: No matter what else Reid may have said in his interview, the truest thing was his introductory phrase: “I don’t really care.” That’s very true, and not just about Reid’s opinion of the Republican field. Reid knows how to get a headline, even when doing so ends up hurting him or his cause. He’s not going to pause to weigh his words, or even to consider if they’re accurate or not. For Reid, excess in the rhetorical pursuit of his agenda is no vice. And there’s a very good chance he’s going to go on doing that every chance he gets from now until he leaves office in early January 2017.

Buckle up. It’s going to be something to see.