Reid takes cash from company whose “greed…led to 11 horrific and unnecessary deaths”

Thursday, April 19, 2012 | 3:55 p.m.

Back in 2010, no one was stronger about BP’s behavior after the Gulf oil spill than Harry Reid: "Their greed led to 11 horrific and unnecessary deaths. It has harmed an enormous tourism industry, threatened business at countless fisheries and disrupted life for many along the Gulf Coast. As the pollution grows worse, those consequences will only compound." Here is the video, courtesy of Real Clear Politics.

You know what also compounds? Interest on money in a campaign account.

Friends For Harry Reid, with the amusing notation of “2016 primary,” received $1,500 on March 5 from BP’s PAC, FEC records show. (The donation was first reported by Bloomberg's Greg Giroux.) That the donation came at a renewables event hardly vitiates the hypocrisy.

I find this highly amusing not only because Reid would take money from a company he once lambasted, but that he and the Democrats are so eager and so repetitive in their scathing attacks on Sen. Dean Heller for being in the pocket of “Big Oil.”

Is there any bigger oil than BP?

“The difference is that Senator Reid has consistently fought to end taxpayer giveaways to Big Oil,” his spokeswoman, Kristen Orthman, emailed. “Some Republicans receive donations and then reward their campaign contributors with billions in taxpayer giveaways. Big difference.”

Perhaps. And, perhaps it is naïve of me to argue that if you describe a company as being all but evil incarnate, maybe you should not take money from it.

I get it, though: The sure-to-be-underfunded Reid 2016 campaign couldn’t do without that $1,500.