Reid Deflects Smear To Win Re-election

By Author: Steven Johnson
Total Articles: 494
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Senate Majority Leader "Dirty" Harry Reid snatched a victory in 2010, despite ads from his opponent, Republican Sharron Angle, that claimed the Democrat wanted to pay for "convicted child molesters and sex offenders" to get erectile dysfunction medications.

The margin of victory was much larger than most analysts and political experts ( read "junkies") had expected, surprising since this was the worst election for Democrats in a century. Any specific campaigns this year were overshadowed by dire talk about the economy - the Republicans solely blaming Democrats despite the common knowledge that the economic downturn was caused by lousy banking, brokering, and debt asset trading - while the national press was too busy talking about the Tea Party to cover any specific races in their substantive depth.

Unless, of course, those campaigns involved outrageous smearing.

How fair were those claims?

Experts agree that the ads were simply untruthful smears against Senator Reid.

The law she had been referencing in her add was actually an amendment to the federal healthcare bill that passed this year and ...
... will take effect in 2014.

Democratic strategists have pointed out that this ludicrous rhetoric was tactical; Republicans were trying to shift the conversation about healthcare away from how many uninsured, millions of children will now be insured under President Obama's landmark legislation and toward the price tag and more vaguely defined parts of the bill that have potential to be exploited for scare-mongering.

Republican Senator Tom Coburn had proposed an amendment to explicitly ban insurers from covering ED medications for people with a history of sex crime. While this seems reasonable enough and, as many Democrats said, most Senators would have voted for it under different circumstances, Reid and his party voted against it because they needed to quickly pass the bill before the molasses-like mechanism of Congress gummed it up.

Republicans also put forth many other amendments specifically designed to stall legislation and give them political ammunition during the midterm elections.

What impact did this have on the election?

It seems that, as often happens, smear campaigning backfired against Sharron Angle. While in other similar races accusations of lavish Democratic spending and fiscal irresponsibility were enough to unseat Democrats, Sharron Angle's campaign made the error of making personal attacks against a well established, respected figure in Nevada politics.

Ultimately, because of the press drawn to this issue, Reid's campaign was able to spin the debate in Nevada away from politically unfavorable issues, such as the handling of the economic downturn, and toward Angle's ranting about "sex predators" getting subsidized viagra.

What does the legislation say about ED medications for sex offenders?

Nothing. It doesn't ban it, but Senator Reid made clear in his campaign, there is plenty of time to pass amendments and figure out exactly how the vaguer parts of the policy will be sorted out.

As the legislation currently stands, it would be possible, though not likely, for convicted sex offenders to get viagra. If a doctor thinks it's medically necessary. However, the legislation will not stand that way. It will go through changes and revisions throughout the remainder of the process until, unless they buy it online, nobody gets viagra cheap.