While a few Republicans like Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele or Sens. Jon Kyl and John Cornyn believe that Sen. Harry Reid should resign from his post, there are some Republicans who support the majority leader.
According to a Tulsa World report, Conservative Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said: “Washington plays a game of gotcha”.
“It pains me that Republicans are saying Harry Reid ought to step down”, Coburn said. “When you point a finger, you have four fingers pointing back at you. There is not anybody in Washington who has not said something that could be judged inappropriate and wrong”.
Similarly, Nevada native and Republican Sen. John Ensign said on Reno’s KKOH radio that “we need to get away from this politics of gotcha”.
“I don’t think there’s a person walking, certainly not a politician out there, that hasn’t made comments they regret”, he said. “When you make those comments, as long as you take responsibility for your comments and apologise for them, I think people should accept that”.
Reid’s comments on US President Barack Obama as a fine presidential candidate because he is “light skinned” and speaks “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one” has been criticised as a racial slur. Obama had accepted Reid’s apologies afterwards.
Sen. John McCain, meanwhile, said that the treatment given to Reid is a “stunning double standard”. He added that keeping Reid in the senate post is unfair since former Senator Trent Lott was booted out after his comments about Strom Thurmond.
