When it comes to blowing smoke up your skirt, no one in the Nevada Republican Party has been better at it than Chairman Chris Comfort. But his act is getting old. Sooner or later you have to provide more than rhetoric and platitudes. You have to produce actual results.
That day of reckoning for Comfort is right around the corner.
Despite having been in office for over four months now, Comfort continues to obsess over Harry Reid. His communications operation simply regurgitates RNC press releases slamming Harry while Harry's son Rory, running for governor, gets a free pass.
In the meantime, the party has failed to file quality candidates for various legislative and other seats currently held by Democrat incumbents, or has filled many of those seats with B-team candidates. And the filing deadline is today.
In addition, Comfort provided no party presence, guidance or assistance to GOP legislators during the recently concluded special session in Carson City. Not only wasn't Comfort at the table, he wasn't even in the room. Or in the building. Or for that matter, in Carson City.
There's been, to the best of my knowledge, only one fundraising event since Comfort took the reins.
Meanwhile, Rory Reid and Democratic legislative leaders continue to pummel Gov. Jim Gibbons and Republicans over budget and other issues while Comfort feeds the press spin about how the GOP is more united than ever. His appearance on Jon Ralston's "Face to Face" program opposite Democrat Party Communications Director Phoebe Sweet last week was nothing short of embarrassing.
As was his recent press statements that a tightening of voter registration numbers by some 20,000 voters last month was due to some national wave of joy for Republicans rather than the reality of a scheduled voter registration "purge" by the election department.
And exactly what is he doing about this new Tea Party of Nevada threat? Comfort's public dismissal of them as being virtually irrelevant despite some half-dozen high-profile GOP losses in recent years by margins less than the number of votes cast for conservative third-party candidates borders on clinical denial.
With the political winds blowing "right"-ward right now, all of this under the leadership(?) of Chairman Comfort amounts to yet another major blown opportunity for the party that never seems to blow an opportunity to blow an opportunity. And I'm hearing rumblings that party regulars and Central Committee members are tiring of it very quickly.
In fact, I smell mutiny in the air.
• Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a non-profit public policy grassroots advocacy organization. He may be reached at chuck@
citizenoutreach.com.