Eye on the prize

Despite the internecine GOP bickering, Tuesday's Republican Senate primary has always been about one person: Harry Reid.

The Senate majority leader is the most powerful Nevadan ever elected to Congress. But as his national profile has increased, his strength at home has plummeted. He's easily the most unpopular politician in the state -- even more reviled than Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons, the favorite punching bag of local pundits for four years running.

That's because Sen. Reid no longer represents Nevadans. His job is to grease the Democratic Party's far-left agenda through the political and procedural hurdles of the upper chamber. He is the Obama administration's first-string water boy, the president's point man to pass the wish list of unions, environmentalists and big-government, deficit-spending, tax-hiking redistributionists from Santa Monica to Manhattan.

It is a docket that a majority of Nevadans do not support.

It is the reason Harry Reid must go.

The Republican primary has been a volatile, spirited campaign, one that has occasionally lost sight of the bigger picture: beating Harry Reid.

A survey conducted this past week by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for the Review-Journal shows former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle leading Danny Tarkanian and former state Sen. Sue Lowden. All three want to turn back the Obama-Reid agenda. All three would be competitive against Sen. Reid in November's election.

None can defeat Sen. Reid, however, if the Republican Party and fiscally conservative independents fail to unite behind this week's winner.

Nevada politics are once again in the national spotlight. Sen. Reid's re-election bid is the defining race of the 2010 general election -- not just here, but across the country.

Silver State voters will have an opportunity to send a message that will be heard across the country. One that repudiates bailouts and government takeovers of private industry. One that rejects recession spending sprees and runaway national debt. One that demands a different course for our economy. One that spurns amnesty for illegal immigrants, cap-and-trade schemes and the demands of Big Labor.

A vote against the policies of Barack Obama.

A vote against Harry Reid.