Reid: Better a Coward and a Fool Than a Liberal

Report: Reid Bucked Obama On Gitmo For Fear Of Looking “Liberal”

By Greg Sargent

Adam Nagourney reports this morning on the thinking of Harry Reid, suggesting that Reid dramatically broke with President Obama’s policy of closing Guantanamo Bay because he’s worried that Republicans trying to snatch his Senate seat next year will paint him as too liberal:

With an eye back home, Mr. Reid has taken increasing care not to be identified with some of the more liberal leaders in his party. Republicans say that whomever they run against him, a central part of the campaign will be to link him with Democratic figures like Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the speaker of the House…

In a display of self-preservation, he also broke with the administration in leading his caucus against providing the money that the president had sought to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The sourcing here is murky. But given Reid’s repetition of the mantra that “we will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States,” it seems likely that this is exactly the calculation Reid has made. It would be really interesting to see Nevada residents polled on how they feel about the closing of Guantanamo and the relocation of detainees in the U.S.

If Nagourney is right about Reid’s thinking, the Republicans don’t even have a candidate to run against him yet, but they’ve already gotten Reid to adopt a defensive crouch. Clearly, last November’s victory did little to impair the unerring instinct Congressional Dems have for letting Republicans set the terms of the debate on key national security issues.