Harry Reid closes the gap on Howard Dean

Harry Reid continues to run well in the tin-foil hat derby. Howard Dean may be out of his reach, but it’s not as if Reid isn’t trying.

As John has noted, Reid’s latest bit of foolishness was his statement that an amendment to immigration reform bill to make English the official language of the U.S. is “racist.” Reid’s rationale was that the measure “is directed basically to people who speak Spanish.”

Well, yes. But Reid cannot believe that if a comparable wave of immigrants were speaking Italian, for example, Congress would be less interested in making English our official language.

In the past, as Charles Hurt of the Washington Times notes, Reid has been critical of those who play the race card in an effort to stifle legitimate debate about immigration and its effects. Reid must have taken an incivility pledge as a condition of becoming Senate Minority Leader.

And let’s not forget Reid’s ridiculous staff. When Senator Dole took offense at the suggestion that she (and indeed two-thirds of the Senate) was being racist, staffer Rebecca Kirszner tried to change the subject to Karl Rove, claiming that he must have told Dole what to say. Reid’s operation now having implied that Dole is both a stooge and a racist, his spokeperson added that “Republicans are trying to distract Americans from the fact that they’ve had five years to secure our borders and fix our immigration system and haven’t done it.”

But wait. Isn’t the act of securing our borders “basically directed to people who speak Spanish?”

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