Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) upped the rhetorical ante this morning by comparing opponents of health care reform to conservatives who tried to block emancipation and equal rights -- prompting the Republican national chairman to question his sanity.
Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Reid blasted GOP leaders who have urged Democrats opt for a slower, incremental approach to reform instead of the mega-bill the majority hopes to push through the Senate by Christmas
Reid started by mimicking Republicans whom he claims have said: "'Slow down, stop everything, let's start over."
"You think you've heard these same excuses before? You're right," he continued. "In this country...there were those who dug in their heels and said, 'Slow down, it's too early. Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough' " - about slavery.
When women wanted to vote, he went on, opponents said, " 'Slow down, there will be a better day to do that -- the day isn't quite right.' "
He finished with: "When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."
Reaction was swift. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who is black, questioned Reid's state of mind -- and demanded an apology.
“Harry Reid is under immense pressure to pass this 2,000 page experiment on our nation’s health – an experiment that creates a new $1 trillion dollar federal entitlement program by cutting $500 billion from Medicare, all at a time when our country is in miserable debt and facing an extreme job crisis. The pressure has apparently led Senator Reid not only to make offensive and absurd statements, but also to lose his ability to reason... Having made this disgraceful statement on the floor of the United States Senate, Mr. Reid should immediately apologize on the Senate floor to his colleagues, to his constituents, and to the American people. If he is going to stand by these statements, the Democrats must immediately reconsider his fitness to lead them.”
Senate Republicans were also furious, reported POLITICO's Meredith Shiner, who went to their Q-and-A Monday.
"They are so desperate that it is unbelievable. And for Senator Reid to go out this morning and make such an outlandish statement like he made, just is another indication of the desperation that the Democrats are showing and the pressure that they're feeling," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.).
Said Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), "I think it's beneath the dignity of the majority leader, for one. I think it's beneath the dignity of the Senate...to make any kind of outlandish claim similar to what was made on the Senate floor this morning, and I personally am insulted by the Majority Leader."
Reid's aides weren't apologizing -- referring to the GOP's "feigned outrage" and a "ploy" to distract voters from the lack of Republican alternative.
"It is hard to believe Senate Republicans are making these charges with a straight face," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley. "For the past eight days they¹ve done nothing but obstruct health care on the Senate floor and throughout this year have played politics with this and virtually every other issue of importance to the American people.
Did Reid go too far?
It's an old debate - 40 years old, to be precise.
Martin Luther King drew similar criticism - equating social reform with racial justice - when he tried to expand the civil rights movement into a broader call for economic justice during his Poor Peoples Campaign and his final trip to Memphis in support of the sanitation strike.
Reid, of course, doesn't have a monopoly on harsh pronouncements.
On Sunday, NRSC Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) invoked Stalin-era Soviet prison to describe Reid's reform plan on Fox News. "It will limit people's choices to, in many cases, to a government-run program like Medicaid which is essentially a health care gulag, because people will not have any choices but to take that poorly performing government plan," he said.
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