Questions about election’s legitimacy are a new low

By Jon Ralston

Friday, Oct. 29, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

At some point, the overblown fulminations of political campaigns can reach a point that crosses from bemusement to revulsion.

We are now at that point in the U.S. Senate race.

It happens every season around this juncture, with the eleventh hour stretching on for days and the nonsense quotient ever-growing. But the sheer intensity of the Harry Reid-Sharron Angle contest, with nary a day of rest since June 9, has been unmatched in the level of drama, goofiness and surprises.

By now, I am exhausted at the ignorance and repulsed by the vitriol. I can still smile at the various drinking games that have raised blood alcohol levels: A shot for every time Angle says Obamacare, stimulus or bailouts or for every time Team Reid uses the words “extreme” or “dangerous.” That’s fun.

But what’s not fun — or funny — is the increasingly dark tone adopted by the Angle campaign in the final weeks, first by airing some of the most offensive ads of the cycle depicting Hispanics as rampaging thugs to frighten independent voters (they also twist Reid votes, but that seems a misdemeanor in context) and then by choreographing, beginning with Angle in the debate, a plot to raise questions in the electorate’s mind of whether Reid has used his senatorial juice to fill his bank account.

One is blatant race-baiting, called out by many commentators and Hispanic leaders; the other is pure McCarthyism: Have you now or were you ever not a millionaire since you got to Washington, Senator? Answer: Yes.

But answers don’t matter; raising questions does.

But even those tactics, sickening though they may be, fit right into the mainstream of Atwaterian-Carvilleian methods, with a dash of Al Davis thrown in. But now the Republicans have taken this game of raising questions a step further and gone so far out of bounds, especially this year, that the consequences might be incalculable.

During a year in which demagogues aplenty have exploited the fear and despair of Americans, and a Tea Party chorus sounds like a booming echo of Peter Finch in “Network,” local and national Republicans are willing to go to the worst place possible: raising the specter that the election may be tainted by fraud.

They have done so without evidence or cause, relying on wispy rumors and discredited anecdotes. Their motivation — to raise questions should Angle lose, to suppress the vote to help her win — is less important than the potential result: An even more insidious lack of faith by the electorate.

And they have found the perfect boogeyman for this extreme and dangerous game: Harry Reid.

The Senate majority leader’s reputation for making Machiavelli look like a piker prince is well known. He is larger than evil, more diabolical than Beelzebub in the GOP’s mind. He is capable of … anything.

So when Cleta Mitchell, Angle’s lawyer, wrote the words, “Harry Reid intends to steal this election if he can’t win it outright,” she knew exactly what she was doing.

Since Mitchell wrote that this week, the volume has ratcheted up, with Fox News Channel and its local adjunct, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, hyping claims that Clark County Registrar Larry Lomax and Secretary of State Ross Miller have discredited.

My favorite inanity: Reid’s son, Rory, is chairman of the Clark County Commission, which oversees elections, so … A close second: The Service Employees International Union represents voting technicians, so they hacked the machines for Reid.

Beyond Reid the Younger’s ineptitude in not fixing the machines to win for him, too — or has he? Cue the ominous music — or the small fact that the software cannot be preprogrammed, it makes perfect sense. Or not. But of course it doesn’t have to.

They don’t care if they can prove anything so long as they can patronize the angry masses who believe Reid is willing to do anything short of a federal crime (maybe!) to win this race. If you are willing to pit brown against white, if you are willing to support overt voter-suppression tactics (Don’t vote, you benighted Hispanics!), and if you are willing to accuse your opponent of corruption without evidence (indeed, with contradictory evidence), why stop at inflaming the worst suspicions?

But this is a double-edged sword for Angle and her agents fanning the flames of discontent. Much fury has been unleashed this cycle through demagoguery and dissembling. But to tell voters that someone is going to “steal” an election is asking for a revolt, for a storming of the barricades, or — dare I say it? — Second Amendment remedies.

I suppose, when you think about it, it’s the natural conclusion of this campaign. It may well work. But at what cost?