In a highly revealing interview, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) revealed just how bankrupt the progressive ideology that forms the heart of the Democrat Party truly is. CNN’s Dana Bash showed a video of Reid standing on the Senate floor in 2012 and accusing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney of not paying taxes – without a shred of evidence to back up his claim. The camera pans back to Reid. “I don’t regret that at all,” he states flatly. “Some people call that McCarthyite,” Bash responds. “Well, they can all it what ever they want,” smirks Reid. “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

Neither did decency, which is the first casualty for a political party whose core philosophy begins and ends with a single idea: Advance the progressive agenda by any means necessary.

Harry Reid’s career as a hatchet man for the Left embodies that leftist malignancy. And if one thinks Reid is alone, think again. When White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was asked about the interview, and whether the same Barack Obama who had lamented the incivility and disrespect in America’s political discourse would call Reid out, Earnest responded as one would expect, saying, “Not for something that’s three years old.” The accusation was three years old. Reid revealing his contempt for common decency was three days old.

Obama did, in fact, have something to say about Reid. “He’s been one of my best partners and best friends and I’m really honored to have served [with] him,” Obama cooed during a “surprise” phone call made to radio station KNPR during an interview of Reid regarding his decision not to seek re-election in 2016. “There are a lot of folks who are slicker and give smoother TV interviews, but, in terms of somebody who has heart and cares about ordinary people trying to chase the American dream, I don’t think there’s anybody,” Obama gushed.

Ordinary people? “In Nevada the Name to Know is Reid,” headlined the LA Times in 2003. The subtitle of the piece summed up the reason quite nicely. “Members of one lawmaker’s family represent nearly every major industry in their home state,” it stated. “And their clients rely on his goodwill.”

The latest revelation regarding Reid’s involvement with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials in an effort to secure U.S. visas for Chinese investors in a Las Vegas casino reeks of the same influence-peddling that has defined his career. That story has been tamped down since The Washington Times first reported on it in 2013, but an inspector general’s report released March 24 revealed Reid’s involvement was deeper and more prolonged than he had admitted. The report’s conclusion says it all: “Reid pressured a compliant DHS official to override normal departmental procedures and rush through 230 EB-5 foreign visa applications, thereby freeing up $115 million the applicants invested in the SLS Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.”

Does the report have anything to do with Reid’s sudden and surprising decision to retire? “We have quite an operation in Nevada that hasn’t lost a step, and we’re off and running,” he boasted to The New York Times on Jan. 22. “At this stage, I’m fully intending to run.” Why the sudden change of heart?

Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova believes Reid is retiring because a Republican might be elected president in 2016. (One who would appoint an attorney general more interested in Rule of Law than the thoroughly politicized Eric Holder and his penchant for selective investigations, such as indicting Obama critic Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), even as IRS abuser Lois Lerner gets a pass.) “There is no doubt in my mind,” diGenova asserts, “that an independent Department of Justice or an independent U.S. attorney would open a preliminary criminal investigation into Harry Reid’s intervention into the expediting of EB-5 visas and would in addition convene a grand jury.”

Alas, it is not to be. Harry will ride off into the sunset “one step ahead of the posse,” as diGenova puts it. And despite Democrats singing his praises, columnist Charles Krauthammer had a far more accurate take. “[H]e was a disgrace to his own institution because he emasculated it in the name of protecting the president and trying to re-elect Democrats,” Krauthammer insisted. “He didn’t succeed because he essentially shut down the Senate as soon as Republicans took the House in 2010.”

Limitations of space prevent a detailed chronicle of Reid’s abuses that include more baseless allegations against private citizens, his failure to pass a budget for four years while labeling the GOP obstructionist, and his implementation of the nuclear option abolishing the 60-vote threshold needed to invoke cloture and avoid a filibuster – in order to pack DC Circuit Court of Appeals and prevent a serious challenge to ObamaCare.

But it would be utterly remiss to omit the deepest bottom-of-the-barrel moment of Reid’s entire career. “I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and – you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows – [know] this war [in Iraq] is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,” Reid declared in 2007.

First, the surge had not been completely implemented when Reid denounced it as a failure. But far more important, this execrable weasel of a man had no reservations whatsoever declaring the war lost while American men and women remained in harm’s way. And he did so for nothing more than political gamesmanship.

It is precisely that same political gamesmanship – in lieu of common decency – that defines today’s Democrat Party.

As for Reid, a brothel named “Sheri’s Ranch” insisted they “would be honored if [he] would consider our brothel the official venue for [his] 2016 retirement party.” If Reid attends, he should be careful to avoid any group photographs – other than gender, one would be hard-pressed to tell one prostitute from another.