Former Nevada Republican senator Paul Laxalt used the Manchester Union Leader to lay into Steve Forbes the morning after the Iowa caucuses. Forbes’s sin? Running ads showing Ronald Reagan warmly applauding Forbes’s efforts as an executive for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. “Shame on him,” Laxalt told the paper. “Reagan always said he had to remain neutral during the primaries and consistently refused to endorse other candidacies.”
Well, if Reagan always urged neutrality, he has been ill-served by his friend. During Virginia’s bitterly fought Republican senatorial primary in 1994, Laxalt, a supporter of candidate James C. Miller III, solicited a letter from the failing ex-president in order to scuttle the candidacy of Miller’s chief rival, Oliver North. Reagan (or whoever actually did the writing) wrote that he was “pretty steamed about the false statements coming from Oliver North” on the subject of Iran-contra. Laxalt passed the letter on to Sen. John Warner (another Miller ally), who distributed it on the floor of the Senate.
And Laxalt has the gall to attack Forbes for misusing Reagan?
