Brad Dayspring, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, tweets:
That video raises a real question MT @jimgeraghty: Suddenly mockery is less funny. Could Harry Reid have Alzheimer's?
http://t.co/...
— @BDayspring
Har, har, what a comedian. Alzheimer's jokes are
sooo funny.
I hate to think about what he would have said if Harry Reid had accidentally put the Arizona Wildcats in an ad meant to celebrate the UNLV Runnin' Rebels. Then the guffaws would have really rung forth.
But beyond the the fact that Dayspring's comment was childish and unprofessional, it's also rooted in nonsense. The video to which he links shows Reid responding to a floor speech by Wyoming Sen. John Barasso in which Barasso accuses Reid of having said that Republican Senators are lying about Obamacare. Reid says that he doesn't recall accusing Republicans of lying about Obamacare horror stories; that instead he was pointing the finger at dishonest ads aired by the Koch brothers. The video then flashes back one month to a clip of Reid lumping the Koch brothers together with Republican stump speeches.
If that's what the NRSC defines as a gotcha' moment, they've got some serious thinking to do about their standards. For one, from the context it seems likely that Reid was saying he doesn't recall accusing fellow Republican Senators of lying in their floor speeches. But even if you don't give him the benefit of the doubt on that, the reality is that Kochs' dishonest campaign is inseparable from the GOP's 2014 strategy—a point that Reid went on to make in the continuation of his remarks.
If Dayspring or anyone else at the NRSC wants to distance the GOP from the Kochs and denounce the misleading ads they are running about Obamacare, then it might be unfair for Reid to criticize the GOP along with the Kochs. But we all know that isn't going to happen, because at the end of the day Republicans aren't just pleased by the willingness of the Kochs to lie, they are counting on it.