GOP creates issue for Ensign

John Ensign isn't causing problems for Republican leadership. It's Republican leaders who are causing problems for John Ensign.

Earlier this week, Republican leaders such as House Speaker Dennis Hastert Sen. Strom Thurmond made a big deal of the bill that would send nuclear waste to Nevada.

Apparently, it was a Broadway-worthy song and dance intended to show major campaign contributors from the nuclear industry that Republicans are doing everything they can for their money.

Of course, it's all a sham because President Clinton already promised to veto the bill. It's to the credit of fellow Democrats Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, Nevada's senators, that they can get the bill tossed out year after year, and maintain a veto-proof margin.

Becoming the nation's dumping ground doesn't play well in Nevada. And Ensign, as the Republican who would like to replace Bryan in the Senate, gets backed into a corner when his party trumpets its Screw Nevada theme in Washington.

Naturally, Ensign says the right things. And his campaign spokesman, Mike Slanker, sounded downright annoyed by the antics this week.

"He has been forced to fight his party and members of his own party over the last six years on this," Slanker said. "This is not going to stop his ability to fight them."

The situation does make Ensign seem like an independent thinker, something Nevadans like more than anything else in their representatives. He darn well better listen to residents of the state over the bleatings of party bosses.

But why do they create a wedge that Democrat Ed Bernstein, his November opponent, can exploit? Nuclear waste is easily the most identifiable issue in Washington for Nevadans. If push comes to shove, the Democrats say, we can't really trust Ensign.

To us, the only possible answer is that the nuclear industry is so powerful in some states that elected officials there are willing to risk an important Senate seat in Nevada in order to curry favor in their own districts.

Sacrifice Nevada for the good of the rest of the country? That kind of reasoning does have a familiar - if distinctly bitter - taste to it.