No sooner had the deal been sealed for a health care reform vote in the Senate than did the tea partiers began to use it to target Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In a fundraising email sent hours before the vote that cleared the way for a reform bill’s passage in the Senate, organizers of the Tea Party Express series of cross-country lecture tours called on tea partiers everywhere to pay for an ad targeting Reid in Nevada.
“It is we the people who have been slaves to your failures and arrogance,” the ad reads. “Our country deserves better.”
Reid’s locked in a tough reelection fight back home in Nevada, and tea partiers — as well the national Republican party they’re increasingly allying themselves with — would like nothing better than to defeat the top Democrat in the Senate in the first election since the voters handed Reid a super-majority to work with.
“Harry Reid is going to get what’s due him,” the fundraising email reads. The tea partier group is hoping to raise $100,000 so it can run the spot “on every Nevada TV station morning, noon and night,” according to the email.
Though the ad is most notable because it features what seems to be the scariest photo of Reid ever found by anyone, it’s also indicative of the uphill climb Reid faces next year. Republicans, like the tea partiers, will devote national resources to knocking out the Democratic leader in the Senate. Poll numbers show Reid has problems in his home state, and knocking him off would send a strong message to Republicans rallying their base after a string of defeats since 2006.
Watch the tea partier ad:
