Columnist Jon Ralston: State GOP is inept on Yucca

Friday, June 25, 2004 | 4:43 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the Ralston Report. He can be reached at (702) 870-7997 or at ralston@vegas.com.

WEEKEND EDITION

June 26 - 27, 2004

Tell the truth: If you read the words "Yucca Mountain" in the newspaper, your eyes glaze over and you turn the page.

Like me, you probably suffer from Yucca Mountain Fatigue Syndrome (YMFS) -- an affliction caused by two decades of endless, overheated rhetoric by pandering politicians and the sense of hopelessness that D.C. developments have engendered. But before you stop reading this column, know that there is a much more important issue related to Yucca Mountain during this presidential race, one that goes to the integrity of the state's GOP leaders and to their abject political incompetence.

This comes to mind after the recent visits by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, both choreographed and scripted to avoid even the merest mention of Yucca Mountain. I have been seething in silence about this for some time, but I can no longer bear the banalities from the state's Republican doyens.

By not speaking out, local GOP leaders tacitly are condoning what the president has done on the dump. But worse, at a time when the president needs every state he can get, their failure to force some kind of concession out of the mute chief executive is nothing short of political malfeasance. Never has the state had more leverage over an administration than this moment -- when Nevada is one of a dozen and a half battleground states the campaign must have.

Why have Gov. Kenny Guinn, Attorney General Brian Sandoval, Reps. Jim Gibbons and Jon Porter and Sen. John Ensign not informed Bush's campaign that their support is conditioned on some sort of reversal on Yucca Mountain?

Instead, they are so timid or so inept that they can't even persuade Bush to say anything about the dump when he comes here. And they have approved of the administration sending surrogates -- political guru Karl Rove and campaign chairman Marc Racicot -- who have offered up revisionist history and haughty comments that the Republicans here have let go unchallenged. But at least they got pictures with the president for posterity.

Rove repeated the canard that Bush used the proverbial sound science to make his decision, which is contradicted by history. And Racicot had the gall to say that Nevadans are fulfilling our "obligations and duties," as he told the Associated Press.

This is the elephant in the room the Republicans are choosing to ignore. Or worse, they secretly believe the dump is inevitable and thus their silence is even more insidious. "YMFS is running rampant in the state," they may have whispered to the Bush campaign, "so just don't address it. We have your back."

How much longer can anyone be expected to tolerate this "we agree to disagree" nonsense and the "we're disappointed in the president" blather. It reminds me of the old joke about the question addressed to the 16th president's wife after she and her husband attended the Ford's Theater production of "Our American Cousin" where he was assassinated: "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

As I hear Republican leaders offer their drivel about Ronald Reagan labeling as a friend someone who agrees with you 80 percent of the time, I ask: "Other than the fact that Bush lied to the state, humiliated the governor and its two senators and accelerated Yucca Mountain, how do you like the president?"

I know that since the Screw Nevada Bill 17 years ago, the canoodling metaphors have been overused. But permit me to say that these folks are not even playing hard to get and thus are the cheapest whores imaginable. They are giving it away for free -- and at their constituents' expense.

The history is so damning. A quick review: Bush ignores Nevada during campaign 2000. When Al Gore gets traction, Bush sends meaningless statement (written for him here) about "sound science" being his lodestar. Bush wins state by four percentage points. A year after he takes office, the president approves the dump -- less than a week after he grants a meaningless audience to Guinn, Ensign and Sen. Harry Reid. Guinn exercises meaningless veto. Congress overrides. Game over.

And now, offered a second chance, they are beating around the bush instead of beating on Bush for a concession. Never before have the state's GOP leaders had so much leverage. Nevada is one of a handful of states that could turn the election. I ask again: Why haven't any of those Bush backers conditioned their backing on some substantive action now by the administration? (And, no, I don't mean seeking benefits, which is political suicide. I mean something that would bring the process to a halt for legitimate reasons.)

Moral weakness I could accept. But they are simply bad politicians and history will record them as having missed their moment.

I know partisans out there will yelp that this is just some pro-Kerry screed. Not so. I actually believe that Kerry's pledge to stop Yucca Mountain is as hollow as Bush's faxed promise in 2000. He offers no specifics, and if he's elected, I don't believe he will lift a finger. Call it YMFS or just cynicism.

But that's not the point. Bush can do something and the state folks have the ability to extract something. Instead, they appear to be doing what Racicot said -- fulfilling their obligations and duties.

Even if they can't summon the political courage to publicly criticize Bush or get him to say something, anything about Yucca Mountain, Nevada Republican leaders cannot defend their absolute failure to get some kind of quid pro quo on the dump for their support as the president's campaign again takes Nevada for granted.

It is at best embarrassing and at worst unconscionable.

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