A week after Sarah Palin stood in his hometown and called for his ouster, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) let one fly at the former Miss Wasilla in a recent campaign speech. “I was going to give a few remarks on the people who were over here a week ago Saturday,” said Reid in a clip posted by Fox News, “but I couldn’t find it written all over my hands.” (A reference, of course, to Palin’s choice to write interview notes on her hand.) The veteran Nevada senator, appearing at what looks like an old-timey diner of sorts with cushy leather booths and kitschy Western wall art, also dropped a “You betcha” into his remarks by way of poking fun at Palin, the 2008 vice presidential candidate for the GOP.
Reid, to be fair, owed it to himself to fire back at Palin and the Tea Partiers who’d descended on dusty Searchlight, Nev., last weekend for, among other things, a Harry Reid Bash Fest 2010. As our own Tim Murphy, on the scene in Searchlight, wrote, “Nearly every single one of Harry Reid’s potential GOP challengers were given five minutes to make they case for why they disliked Searchlight’s native son the most.” Hitting back at Palin was the least Reid could do. (To watch the video clip, click here.)
In all seriousness, though, Reid had better be ready to remove the kid gloves on the campaign trail. A Rasmussen poll released Monday shows that Reid trails by 15 percentage points in a potential Senate match-up with Sue Lowden, the former chair of the Nevada GOP. In the poll, Lowden claimed 54 percent of support (a 3 percent increase from early March), while Reid had a mere 39 percent (a 1 percent increase).
Of course, the midterm elections are eight months away; an entire race can be won, lost, then won again between now and November. But the last thing Harry Reid wants is to find himself in a hole against Lowden when Congress shifts from policymaking to full-blown campaigning mode later this summer.
