One thing I don’t understand about the Kevin Drum argument that Harry Reid is lying and needs to be denounced (even though it’s not even clear if he’s lying). Reid actually has a pretty decent track record when it comes to making assertions about Republicans:

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Reid repeatedly taunted Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, saying he should show leadership. He was quoted in a Las Vegas newspaper saying, “I can’t stand John McCain.”

In 2005, Mr. Reid said of  President George W. Bush: “This guy is a loser.” He later apologized for that remark, but stood by another claim that Mr. Bush had been “a liar” while in office.

Mr. Reid called Senator Bill Frist, the Republican leader from 2003 to 2007, “amateurish,” and said in 2007 that Gen. Peter Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was “incompetent.” Mr. Reid once said that Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was “one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington.”

Are any of these wrong? No. Obviously, the way in which Reid made the claims of the hour begs some skepticism, but Reid doesn’t have the biggest history of outlandish partisan deception, so treating it as though it were automatically false doesn’t quite seem warranted.

This is just bizarre to me. Generally speaking, liberals like to present themselves as honorable and above-the-fray. Progressives, especially ones who dwell on the internet, often consciously model themselves in reaction to this tendency, and see these traits as cowardly, wimpy, totebaggerish. Now, there are times when attacks go too far, and should be called out. But I’m hard-pressed to figure why this would be one of them. If it were Terry McAuliffe or someone of that caliber making the attacks, well then clearly they’re to be avoided. McAuliffe is a dishonest hack. But in the absence of corroborating or damning evidence, what we’re essentially making here is a characterological judgment. Is Reid’s claim dishonest? Since it’s unknowable at this time, the question becomes, is Reid dishonest? I don’t see him being more dishonest than most, perhaps less so. The Greenspan criticism I remember was from before Ayn Rand’s former pal had his reputation shredded, and Greenspan was still respected. Reid was right when saying it wasn’t popular. Doesn’t he deserve some benefit of the doubt–at least until he really gets caught in it? Again, this thing ought to be taken with a kernel of salt, but the guy hasn’t completely torched his credibility to make this kind of charge yet is all I’m saying.

And that’s my issue with Kevin Drum here (and, to a lesser extent, with Kilgore here). He’s taking a typically high-minded, liberal posture, but it’s not because he’s repulsed by a flatly untrue story–it could be that, and you can opine that, but you can’t prove it, at least not now. Drum is really the cynical one by assuming that it’s invented, and he’s doing so because the heat’s being turned up and this guy just never wants to get singed. The fact-checking outlets are declaring the whole thing a falsehood without proof, and Drum is following suit. It’s hard to emphasize just how crazy this is going to make progressives, because it smacks of everything they’ve come to despise in liberals. And while I’m not angry myself because I know this about Drum and stopped following him a while ago, I don’t blame them.

What does amuse me is that Romney keeps prodding Reid to produce his source. He thinks he’s calling Harry’s bluff, but Harry’s calling his. Reid doesn’t need to produce anything, he can just go on saying that it was in confidence from someone in a position to know, whose career would be in jeopardy if, etc. He has nothing to lose. Romney trusts his old friend belligerence to help get him fix this as it has all the others, only it’s the wrong tool this time.