August 27, 2008, 8:55 pm
Reid’s Mince-No-Words Convention Speech
By Carl Hulse
DENVER — The word is that Senator Harry Reid, the mince-no-words majority leader from Nevada, wrote his own convention speech. It certainly sounded like it.

Mr. Reid, who has occasionally called the president a liar and recently told a hometown newspaper that he can’t stand John McCain, lit out after President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

“For the past eight years, the man in the oval office has tipped his hat over his eyes, kicked back his chair and snoozed at his desk,” Mr. Reid told the delegates in a speech that focused on energy.

“Charged with protecting our national interests, he slept on duty while his vice president conspired with oil industry cronies. Tasked with cutting off funding to terrorists, he slept on duty while oil shortages worsened, oil prices soared and dollars by the ton were delivered to terrorists’ banks in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Faced with a new kind of war this president and his vice president helped their friends the old fashioned way; through war profiteering, tax cuts for billionaires, and in many cases, out-and-out corruption.”

He went on to accuse “Doc McCain” of peddling snake oil in the form of regular calls for more offshore oil drilling, saying that the potential environmental consequences of more drilling are unknown and that drilling cannot solve the rise in oil costs. “But kindly old Doc McCain would like to sell it to you anyway,” he said.

Republicans shrugged off the attack, with spokesman Alex Conant saying that the altitude in Denver may have gotten to Mr. Reid.