Cornyn calls for Reid to step down as Senate leader
Texas Sen. John Cornyn today became the first member of the Republican congressional leadership to call for Nevada Sen. Harry Reid to step down as Senate Majority Leader.
Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that Reid's 2008 description of Barack Obama as a "light skinned" candidate "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," quoted in a newly released book, disqualify the embattled Nevadan from serving as the Senate's leader.
The Texas Republican -- along with other GOP officials -- accused top Democrats of having a double-standard: demanding the resignation of then-Majority Leader Trent Lott for lauding then-Sen. Strom Thurmond's segregationist past and accepting an apology from Reid.
"In 2002, Democrats expressed outrage at Sen. Lott and called on him to step down as leader," Cornyn, the GOP's top Senate political strategist, declared in a statement released by the party's campaign committee. "That same standard should be applied to Senator Reid and his embarrassing and racially insensitive statements; statements, I would add, that Sen. Reid still has yet to clarify. As we await his explanation, Sen. Reid should do the right thing, follow the example that he himself set in 2002, and step down as Majority Leader."
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http://blogs.chron.com/txpotomac/2010/01/cornyn_calls_for_reid_to_step.html