Harry Reid (Photo: Getty)

As the news broke that Nevada Senator Harry Reid was in a car accident, a major paper in his home state, the Las Vegas Review Journal, mistakenly identified the Democratic Senate Majority Leader as a Republican.

"U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, R-Nev., 72, was taken to the emergency room at University Medical Center in Las Vegas Friday afternoon following a traffic accident," the story initially said.

The error has since been corrected. Obviously, this was a fast breaking story and these types of mistakes happen. Unfortunately for those who report on breaking political news, "R" is right next to "D" on computer keyboards. The Observer reached out to Las Vegas Review Journal Editor Michael Hengel to see if he had any comment on the situation. As of this writing, he has yet to respond.

Mr. Reid was taken to the hospital after what appeared to be a rear-end crash on an Interstate that runs parallel to the Las Vegas Strip. According to New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney, Mr. Reid and his security detail are all "fine" and the Senator "walked into" the hospital.

Nevada Highway Patrol Office spokesman Jeremie Elliott told the AP six vehicles were involved in the apparent chain-reaction crash, including two Las Vegas police vehicles, two civilian vehicles and two Capitol Police vehicles.

View a screencap of the Google news result showing the Las Vegas Review Journal's original Reid lede below.

(Photo: The Onion)

In a "breaking news" story in The Onion this morning, the satirical newspaper reported Congress took a group of touring school kids hostage in the Capitol rotunda, demanding $12 trillion by 6 p.m. or they'll shoot a kid every hour. For once, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) are cooperating to reduce the deficit. 

The Onion is also live-tweeting the "hostage situation", the lastest update being:

"Police helicopter just ordered to pull back after Rep. Trent Franks tried to take it down with a shotgun #CongressHostage"

In the next 24 hours, we predict someone on cable news will demand that The Onion apologize to the nation of Norway.

Boehner and Obama.

It would almost seem that the stars had finally aligned. After weeks of stalled talks and contentious meetings between House Republicans and Democrats that escalated into a public spat between Speaker John Boehner and President Obama, a bill finally made it through the House and into the Senate, where it was speedily approved Tuesday morning thanks to backing from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Majority Leader Harry Reid, just in time for the Cinderella-esque stroke-of-midnight deadline. The anthropomorphic bill from Schoolhouse Rock! had nothing on this drama.

So, the good news is that the country isn’t going to default on its debt obligations, which puts us at least one step ahead of Teresa Giudice from the Real Housewives of New Jersey. The bad news is that just as everyone was making nice and learning to compromise, Vice President Joe Biden made an offhand comment that Congress’s Tea Party Republicans “acted like terrorists” during negotiations, an ill-timed gaffe that not even the heartwarming sight of Gabrielle Giffords casting her first vote on the House floor after nearly getting assassinated in January could correct. Oh, Joe. To paraphrase The Princess Bride, you fell victim to one of the classic blunders—of which the most famous one is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,” and an only slightly less well-known one is: Never go in against the Tea Party when debt is on the line.

But at least the Dems aren’t buying Twitter followers, which is more than we can say for beleaguered 2012 hopeful Newt Gingrich. After bragging to the Marietta Daily Journal that, despite abysmal poll numbers, he has “six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined,” a former staffer submitted an anonymous tip to Gawker claiming that 80% of Mr. Gingrich’s 1.3 million followers are either inactive or dummy accounts (this figure was later amended by networking firm PeekYou to a whopping 92%). File this under #YouKnowYouWon’tWinTheNominationWhen …

Also stepping in it this week: Bronx principal Frank Borzellieri, a white supremacist who, despite having published racist essays, somehow worked at a largely black and Latino Catholic school for two years before anyone noticed; Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who did not do a very good job of apologizing to the vacation rental company’s disgruntled clients whose apartments were trashed (it’s O.K., now you can rent swaths of Lower East Side grass for $50/hour, courtesy of N.Y.C.’s own Timeshare Backyard!); British comedian Johnnie Marbles, who got sentenced to six weeks in jail for memorably pie-ing Rupert Murdoch during July’s News Corp. hearing in Parliament; and the M.T.A., which is responsible for screwing up repairs and slowing service, according to a joint report released last weekend by state and city comptrollers Thomas DiNapoli and John Liu. (And here we thought we were just getting a complimentary sauna with our subway fare.)

So perhaps we were too hasty about the whole “stellar alignment” thing. Turns out mercury is in retrograde, and not to get all Dionne Warwick on you, but something has seemed … off the past few days. First, in the midst of an oppressive heat wave, baseball-size hail rained down on Queens (adding insult to injury for the hapless Mets). Then, a peacock escaped from the Central Park zoo and began terrorizing (read: sitting calmly on) a Fifth Avenue window ledge. Not one but two adult men made the news for wearing inappropriate full-body animal costumes (but on the upside, only one, David Wu, was a member of Congress). Mark Zuckerberg added a creepy pregnancy feature to Facebook. And just as the debt ceiling legislation went through, assuaging Wall Street’s fears about market stability, the Dow dropped 265 points. Maybe it’s just our bad fortune.

"We talked about currency, we met with the American Chamber of Commerce," said the senator, offering one example. "They're afraid to speak out publicly, but when they met with us privately, every one of them had a complaint."

Schumer has been an outspoken critic of several Chinese policies, which he believes gives the country an unfair advantage in the international market. During his trip, which included nine of his fellow senators, Schumer criticized China's financial leaders for refusing to accelerate the appreciation of the yuan. The senator also said today that the country's current economic arrangement with the United States is unfair.

"Major, major [U.S.] companies are not allowed to sell goods in China. We allow China to sell goods here," he said. "They do not reciprocate."

Schumer said that he plans to take steps to deal with the situation through legislative action, following similar recent comments by Harry Reid.

"I have a whole bunch of legislation that I will be announcing on currency and other issues to deal with the fact that China doesn't treat us fairly," he said.

Park51 developer Sharif El-Gamal, accidental protagonist of the most politicized real estate story in recent memory, sat behind the blond-wood desk in his office six floors above the lower Broadway mall, and, meaty hands clasped before him, held forth on what it takes to make it in real estate. After all, it is real estate—not fanning national anti-Muslim hysteria—that is Mr. El-Gamal's actual business.

"You know, the real estate business is a very tough business, and you have to be patient and persistent, and aggressive, and thank God I have all those qualities," said Mr. El-Gamal, who looks something like Liev Schreiber, if Mr. Schreiber were to grow a gut and don the uniform of a young real estate upstart: pinstriped suit, manicured nails, ostentatiously large watch, unblinking blue-eyed gaze.

All of 37 years old, Mr. El-Gamal says he owns upward of 400,000 square feet of real estate in New York City, with a direct staff of 20 and an indirect staff of about 100, if you count the various entities he controls.

Before the news media and Republican establishment turned his plan for a mosque two blocks from ground zero into a rallying cry for Islamophobes everywhere—a hallowed two-block radius that includes countless fast-food restaurants, an Off-Track Betting outlet, nail salons and the headquarters of Goldman Sachs—Mr. El-Gamal had other projects to deal with, including the 12-story office building at 31 West 27th Street, which his SoHo Properties bought for more than $45 million in 2009, and a six-unit luxury condo at 50 Lispenard Street that's about to come to market.

Mr. El-Gamal calls the brouhaha surrounding Park51, essentially an Islamic JCC, "a big distraction." Which is not to say that he plans to back down. In truth, his commitment to building an Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan seems to grow in direct proportion to the level of controversy fomented by his opponents. They might want to take note.

"I don't give up," Mr. El-Gamal said. "I don't quit. It's just not in my DNA."

BROOKLYN-BORN, SHARIF El-Gamal is the child of a Chemical Bank executive and the eldest of four siblings. He grew up all over the world, with sojourns in Liberia and Alexandria, Egypt. His early adult life mirrored his peripatetic upbringing. 

"I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do," Mr. El-Gamal said. "I wanted to be an architect, I wanted to be an engineer, but I've always been very restless."

After high school, he shuttled between different New York universities, including Pace, SUNY Farmingdale and NYIT, before concluding that formal education was not his bag. "You know, I couldn't focus in a classroom, so I finally gave up. That was the only thing I've ever given up on, because I'm not one to give up."

In the late 1990s, he entered real estate, first, as a residential sales broker. Within his first year, he transitioned to the more lucrative side of the business: commercial real estate sales. Soon, he'd sold nine buildings. In his estimation, he was very lucky. Over the next decade, he made his living in commercial real estate.

By 2006, Mr. El-Gamal felt he'd learned the business through and through and decided to become "a principal"—a landlord and developer in his own right. Using money from family and friends, as well as bank financing, Mr. El-Gamal began building his portfolio.

"I've been discreetly buying under the radar without any publicity since 2006," Mr. El-Gamal said. "I've never publicized any of my commercial transactions and I was very successful in it."

"I was just happy getting a check and going on to the next deal," he continued. "That's always been my philosophy."

Not that the man is without vanity. On the wall behind his desk hang two newspaper clips—one from The Commercial Observer, another from The New York Times—along with a framed Islamic prayer and photos of his wife, a homemaker, and their two toddler daughters. A pile of prayer mats rests nearby.

LIKE MANY A successful businessman, Mr. El-Gamal tends to look for inefficiencies in the market, even when going about his religious awakening.

"I wasn't really brought up in a really religious home, and I guess after 9/11, I was curious to understand, who am I? What is my identity that I've been raised to be?" Mr. El-Gamal said. "My journey started in Lower Manhattan."

He began visiting mosques downtown near where he lived and worked, and came away with the realization that there were more mosque-goers than there were mosques to accommodate them. Some mosques had to hold four services a night, and still there were people praying on the streets.

He began toying with the idea of developing a mosque himself. When asked if making a profit was his initial motivation, Mr. El-Gamal, smiling slyly, would only say, "I am a businessman. I am a businessman."

Soon, he met Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, and his plans grew more complex.

"I'd never met an American imam who spoke the way I speak, who, it was almost like I was listening to a professor," Mr. El-Gamal said. "I went up to him and I said, 'It's not fair that only 70 people get to hear this.' And I started a relationship with him."

"Then as I got married and as I became a father and a husband and a member of the Jewish Community Center on 76th and Amsterdam, I was like, 'Wow, let's build a community center.'"

Mr. El-Gamal, who now lives on the Upper West Side, continued to focus his energies on the Muslim community in Lower Manhattan, a neighborhood that had long expressed a desire for a new community center. The District Needs Statement put out by Community Board 1 reads, "With the tremendous increase in the population of the Financial District and Seaport and Civic Centers, a community center is urgently needed to support a strong and stable community there."

Yet all of this remained more of an idea than an actual plan until about three and a half years ago, when Mr. El-Gamal and his wife were walking along 57th Street and entered a Sharper Image store.

"And I saw this young man by the name of Francisco Patino, who was on this reality show called American Inventor," he said. "I don't watch TV, but for some reason, I saw this show a couple of times. He was a young 18-year-old kid, but I loved his passion and he stuck in my head."

Mr. El-Gamal said he approached Mr. Patino, and two weeks later, Mr. Patino was his employee. He gave him a map and told him to find a development site in Tribeca south.

"And it had nothing to do with the World Trade Center site," Mr. El-Gamal said. He repeated himself, this time more slowly: "It had nothing to do with the World Trade Center site. It had to do with me being an American, a New Yorker who has particular religious beliefs and wants to help his community."

Anyway, "Literally within two weeks, or within a month of him being here, he made a call and we found the Burlington site. And, when we found that site, he called a guy, who said, 'Oh, good timing, my son is showing the building tomorrow afternoon, and we want to sell.'"

"And then I saw that building," Mr. El-Gamal said, referring to 51 Park Place, the site of a former Burlington Coat Factory that was damaged during 9/11. "I never wanted anything so badly, and it took me
four years to buy it." After years of on-again, off-again negotiations, Mr. El-Gamal closed on the purchase in July 2009 for $4.85 million.

"I never realized that a project that I'm working on would become a topic of national and global debate," he said.

ON AN EASEL in a conference room next to Mr. El-Gamal's office sits a large notepad with red writing on it, vestiges of a brainstorming session on outreach, with mentions of a Park51 blog, Facebook, a fund-raising plan.

Mr. El-Gamal declined to elaborate on the scribblings, but he said that the next step for Park51 was to incorporate it as a nonprofit. "And, then I'll develop it for them." Whether Mr. El-Gamal will be paid a developer's fee remains uncertain. "I don't know yet," he said. "That's not even on my agenda right now."

Crucial to the 13-story project, which is to include a mosque, a swimming pool, a 9/11 memorial and a basketball court, is, of course, financing, somewhere in the ballpark of $100 million, which is a sizable sum, particularly in one of the worst financing markets in decades. 

Mr. El-Gamal brushed aside any such concerns.

"Over the last couple of years, I've started understanding how these community centers work. And, this is all public information, but the Jewish Community Center makes over $25 million in annual revenue. The 92nd Street Y makes over $50 million in annual revenue, from membership and programming."

(The JCC clarified that its operating budget, not its revenue, is more than $20 million.)

"So, if you start looking at what these centers generate once they're built, then you can understand that this is not a very far-fetched idea."

Nor, he said, does the fact that he doesn't fully own the entire site present a problem (he has a long-term lease from Con Edison for part of the site on which the development would rise). He called reports to the contrary "just more noise."

"I bought a 99-year term lease from Con Edison, when I bought the real estate in 2009, and there is a purchase option, which I executed in February," he said. "This is all as of right."

Even so, would he ever consider relocating the center? The chorus of voices suggesting he and the imam do just that has expanded to include both Governor Paterson and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. What if he were offered a tidy sum for the site?

"It's not about money," Mr. El-Gamal said. "But everything does have a price. But it's not about money."

drubinstein@observer.com

Then there are accusations of sexual misconduct, which have the power to destroy candidates (think Mark Souder) and help them (Nikki Haley of South Carolina).

In a world of YouTube, where everyone's a video camera, publicized moments of misstatement and accusation presumably will only increase. But why do some public people in these cross hairs self-immolate while others endure and prevail? Maybe it's because they ignore a few simple rules.

Rule No. 1: Does the gaffe fit into a prior negative narrative? When Jimmy Carter chatted about "ethnic purity" in the white suburbs in his 1976 presidential campaign, and Senator Harry Reid opined on President Obama's "lack of a negro dialect," each statement seemed to be an out-of-character brain burp. It also helped that, respectively, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. and Mr. Obama exonerated the gaffer.

But when a comment seems to reinforce an ingrained perception, then a public weary of rehearsed lines and carefully crafted ads may seize on it as a betrayal of true character. When President Ford announced in his presidential debate that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" in 1976, it was damaging since he hadn't been regarded previously as an Einstein. When Senator George Allen of Virginia mocked a student of Indian descent as "Macaca" in 2006-and Senator Trent Lott  previously had lionized Strom Thurmond's segregationist campaign of 1948-both sounded racist. That Mr. Allen had Confederate flags and an actual noose on his office walls-and that Mr. Lott's history included too many links to white supremacist groups-meant that their political lives were ruined.

I have personal experience with gaffe-dom. During my 2001 race for City Hall after 9/11, I was asked by a radio interviewer how I would have responded to the calamity if I had been mayor rather than Rudy Giuliani. The right answer was either "I don't answer hypotheticals" or "He did great." Period. But when I engaged the question and replied that ideally I could have done as well, "perhaps even better," it was a dopey answer that played into the narrative that I was "arrogant." (Moi? I'm better than that!)

Rule No. 2: Does your base stick with you? When Bill Clinton was caught "having sex" with Monica Lewinsky, he was so popular with the Democratic base-especially elected black Democrats-that they stuck by him when the G.O.P. overplayed its hand with impeachment. Today, he's one of the most respected men in the world. But when my friends Gary Hart in 1984 and Eliot Spitzer in 2006 were publicly exposed, they lacked Mr. Clinton's deep base of party affection and public support.

Rule No. 3: Can you do a convincing mea culpa? Think Barney Frank 15 years ago when a male prostitute was selling his wares from the basement of Mr. Franks' basement-or Richard Blumenthal in his Connecticut Senate race this year saying he had served "in" Vietnam, not "during" Vietnam. Each apologized and each had such deep support among liberals and veterans (see Rule No. 2), respectively, that they moved on and up. (Nor did it hurt that Barney was so brainy and funny.)

Rule No. 4: Are you a hypocrite? While no one exactly runs on an anti-family platform, it's especially damaging when, as with Representative Mark Souder two months back, you've been a big family-values Republican preaching morality to others. Forced to admit to an affair with a female staffer-and with whom he had made an abstinence-only TV tape -he didn't just decline to run but immediately resigned from the House.

In my view, it's fundamentally stupid to judge a person's entire public life by a private indiscretion-or a slip of the tongue that doesn't reflect a character flaw. But tell that to the tabloid media or cable talk shows that need to fill space and airtime. It's no doubt unfair to punish tired candidates for a single mistake. But those are also the rules when driving on a highway-or being England's goalie in the World Cup.

So let's focus more on Fiorina's bad views on immigration than her bad hair day. Does anyone really prefer faithful presidents like Nixon and Bush over F.D.R., Ike, J.F.K. and Clinton? As Lincoln said of Grant when the general was accused of drinking too much, "all our generals should have a bottle of whatever he's drinking."

Those who are unforgiving about innocent mistakes or private misconduct should recall a story attributed to the late congressman Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn. A constituent inspected a chicken at her butcher shop. She picked up one wing, and groaned ... then a leg and said, "Feh!" Behind the counter, an exasperated butcher said, "Ma'am, may I ask you a question?" "Yes," she said. "Could you pass such an inspection?"

Mark Green, the former NYC Public Advocate, is the creator and host of a new nationally syndicated radio show, Both Sides Now with Huffington & Matalin.

"It's a good day," said Sen. Scott Brown, one of the Republicans who voted for reform.

In a statement, Sen. Carl Levin, whose subcommittee grilled Goldman Sachs last month, complained about the unbridled greed that created unheeded risk, which created an atrocious financial crisis. "Wall Street may not have learned the lessons of that story," he said, "but we must pay attention. We must act. We must return the cop to the Wall Street beat, or once again suffer the consequence."

Still, it will take weeks to combine the Senate bill with the House's version. The Times has an excellent run-down of the differences between the two, although their cores are similar. And Reuters and the Wall Street Journal both have good features on financial reform's cast of characters. It turns out, for example, that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who won Sen. Brown's last-minute support, used to be a boxer.

"I just added my name to [the] effort to pass a public option through the reconciliation process, and I wanted you to be the first to know," Mr. Schumer wrote in an email to supporters. He's the first of the Democratic leadership in the Senate to do so.

He credited four senators--Michael Bennet, Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, and fellow New Yorker Kirsten Gillibrand--for renewing the public option push, which had been axed as part of a series of compromises to create a filibuster-proof bill. (That idea died last month, when Massachusetts elected Republican Scott Brown, who opposes the bill.)

Though Mr. Schumer makes 17 senators who have signed on to the letter, Mr. Reid has so far seemed unwilling to press the bill, indicating he doesn't have the votes. The signature of Mr. Schumer--a close confidant of Mr. Reid, and one of the principal negotiators of the health care bill--might signal a renewed push for the public option, or it might simply be a Hail Mary.

"This is far from a done deal, but it's an opportunity to break through the obstructionism Republicans have pushed for the past year," Mr. Schumer wrote to his supporters.

Mr. Schumer's email, in full:

As you know, I've been committed to a strong public option throughout the entire health care reform process.

First it was in the Senate bill, then it was out. But now, thanks to the tenacity of a group of four Democratic Senators -- Michael Bennet (CO), Sherrod Brown (OH), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), and Jeff Merkley (OR) -- there is a renewed push to create a public option as part of health care reform.

I just added my name to their effort to pass a public option through the reconciliation process, and I wanted you to be the first to know.

This is far from a done deal, but it's an opportunity to break through the obstructionism Republicans have pushed for the past year.

Let's keep fighting,
Chuck Schumer

Mr. Schumer has been one of Mr. Reid's most ardent supporters, and has long insisted he's not thinking about replacing Reid as majority leader, but some observers think he and Senate Whip Dick Durbin are already angling for the position.

But Mitch McConnell didn’t say that. Harry Reid did. And instead of calling for his head, every big-name Democrat and every big-name civil rights leader—to say nothing of Obama himself—is rallying around the Senate’s Democratic leader.

It’s a double standard, yes. But it's only fair. Call it the price of being on the wrong side of history.

Few appreciate it today, but once upon a time, it was actually the Grand Old Party, much more than the Democratic Party, that led the way on racial issues. In the decade after the Civil War, for instance, it was the Radical Republicans in Congress who pushed through expansive new laws that significantly improved the status of blacks in the old Confederacy. And it was racist Southern Democrats who wiped out that progress with Jim Crow.

And it was those same white Southerners who, for nearly a century after the Civil War, accounted for the largest and most loyal component of the national Democratic Party. No matter what, the South could always be counted to support the party up and down the ballot. Even as Adlai Stevenson was being demolished by Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, he still snagged 70 percent of the vote in Georgia (and 65 percent in Alabama and 60 in Mississippi).

In those days, a politician expressing ugly, vile sentiments toward African-Americans was more than likely to be a Democrat.

But then something funny happened: the two parties switched roles—abruptly and permanently. The final straw was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, championed by a Southern Democratic president who, as he was affixing his signature on the bill, purportedly mused that he was signing his region away for a generation.

Prior to civil rights, the Democratic Party had been defined by an increasingly untenable alliance of ideological opposites—integrationist Northern liberals like Hubert Humphrey and Herbert Lehman teamed with Southern segregationists like Richard Russell and John Stennis. By embracing what Humphrey called “the bright sunshine of human rights,” Lyndon Johnson effectively chose the Northern wing over the Southern wing.

At the same time, Republicans were grappling with a similar identity crisis. Just as the Democrats moved left on civil rights in ’64, the G.O.P. veered sharply to the right—rejecting the legacy of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and even Eisenhower and embracing Barry Goldwater, a leading opponent of the Civil Rights Act, as its nominee.

The impact was immediate: Johnson won a smashing landslide that fall, racking up 61 percent of the vote nationally. But Goldwater swept the Deep South—59 percent in South Carolina, 69 percent in Alabama and a stunning 87 percent in Mississippi.

From there, a steady, decades-long transformation of the two parties ensued. The Republican Party, which had barely existed in the South prior to ’64, was flooded with disaffected segregationist Democrats—like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond. The godfather of the modern Mississippi Republican Party, Charles Pickering, left the Democrats in 1964 because the party’s national convention agreed to seat two black delegates.

National Republicans began catering to the aggrieved sentiments of white southerners (mindful, of course, of not seeming overtly racist). Richard Nixon built his presidency on his notorious “Southern strategy.” Ronald Reagan opened his general-election campaign in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi—where three civil rights workers had been murdered just 16 years earlier—and won the white crowd over by declaring his belief in “states’ rights.” By 1983, when the Senate finally approved a federal Martin Luther King holiday (after a filibuster threat from Helms, who derided the civil rights hero as a “Communist”), 18 of the 22 no votes came from Republicans It is the descendants of those Southern segregationists (and some of the original segregationists themselves) who now form the backbone of the national Republican Party. And all too often, we are greeted with reminders that, while the rhetoric of their politicians may be toned down, the racial attitudes of many white Southerners remain troubling.

For instance, it was a white Southern Republican (Georgia’s Lynn Westmoreland) who called Obama “uppity” in 2008. And a white Southern Republican (Mississippi’s Trent Lott) who infamously lamented “all of these problems over all these years” that resulted from Thurmond’s defeat in the 1948 presidential election, when he ran on a segregationist platform.

But the “controversy” over Obama’s birth certificate is most telling. A poll last summer found that nearly 90 percent of voters in the Northeast, Midwest and West believe that the president is an American citizen—while only 47 percent of Southerners do. One analysis of the survey concluded that more than 70 percent of white Southerners do not believe that Obama was born in the United States.

No, not all (or even most) Republicans are closet racists. And plenty of Democrats are. But it is the G.O.P. that has willfully built its modern foundation on the lingering racial and cultural resentments of the South, not the Democrats.

This is why Harry Reid is receiving a benefit of the doubt that wouldn’t be extended to a Republican leader under similar circumstances. There is no reason to believe that he was trying to send some kind of coded message to his party’s base. With a Republican, there would be.