The Case for More Allegations and Lies:
The Rude Pundit does not give a happy monkey fuck if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is lying when he says that someone told him that Mitt Romney paid no income taxes for about a decade. What? You think Romney did? You think deferred compensation packages, offshore accounts, and historically low capital gains tax rates didn't give him a tax burden of "too fucking low for a rich dude"? At best, Reid was slightly exaggerating.

And the best parry the right has to Reid's allegations? To demand that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid release their tax returns, ignoring the fact that neither is running for president (and Reid is probably in his last term in the Senate). Or, on the only slightly fringier right, to demand that President Obama release his college records, as if whatever grades Obama made in the 1980s is analogous to knowing how the man who wants to be president made money in 2009. Otherwise, what the GOP is left with is to merely assert that Reid's a liar (as scummy little weasel fucker Reince Priebus and unmarried effeminate-but-no-not-gay-at-all Southern gentleman Lindsey Graham called him).

Politics is not an ethical game. Governing should be, but isn't. However, politics is a wallow in filth that'd make farm hogs say, "Whoa, save some shit-filled mud for the rest of us." For years, we on the left have had to sputter and suffer as Republican after Republican has lied willfully and consciously about the records and lives of Democrats. We have tut-tutted and demanded retractions and corrections. We have slapped our foreheads bloody as we've seen the lies become what many, many people believe is the truth, whether it's Dukakis being soft on crime or Clinton having Vince Foster killed or Gore saying things he simply never said or Swift-boating or birthering. Outrageous, easily proven lies, and we have been told to suck on them like they're a candy cane sticking out of the pants of Uncle Sam.

So you know what? What's good for the motherfuckin' goose is good for the motherfuckin' gander. How's it feel, conservatives, to be helpless in the face of both the allegation about Romney's taxes and your candidate's smug refusal to release any information that would disprove the allegation? Pretty sickening, isn't it? Hey, that candy cane actually tastes like cock when you have to put it in your own mouth.

Whatever Reid's motives are (probably boiled down to "God, I hate that fucking Mitt Romney jerk"), it doesn't matter. What matters is that the story, true or not, is alive. The Rude Pundit has advocated that we tell better lies than the right because lies (whether as scurrilous accusations or the creation of a mythology) are what win elections.  Now, you can get all self-righteous and say that we shouldn't sink to the level of Karl Rove, but the ends justify the means, man.

And here's the deal: Chances are that Reid ain't lying. He's playing chicken, and he ain't gonna turn first.  Reid first asserted on the Senate floor, during a "debate" over the Disclose Act on July 12, that Romney "basically paid no taxes in the prior 12 years." No Republican senators rose up in a huff to defend Romney. You know why? Because they all know it's true. And they know that the dirty secret is that they all use the same loopholes and breaks and tax shelters and creative accounting that Romney uses.

So let's stop fanning ourselves and decrying Reid's methods. You're not getting into a polite game of cribbage. You're getting into a bloody-knuckled brawl. And the ex-boxer is who you want to tell to punch hard.