Republicans across the land are awakening this morning to what they are certain is good news: Harry Reid, the man they love to loathe, is retiring from the U.S. Senate at the end of 2016.

Me? I’m not one of the GOP faithful, but I am more or less glad the Senate minority leader is calling it a career.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/reid-retiring-116445.html?hp=t1_r

It’s not because of anything he’s done that’s offended me. It’s that the man is 75 years of age; he’s been in Washington a very long time; he’s enjoyed countless political victories and suffered countless defeats … and he’s recovering from a brutal eye and facial injury he suffered in a fall from exercise equipment.

Reid has gotten stale. It’s likely time for some new representation in his home state of Nevada and I venture to guess that Democrats as well as Republicans are of like minds in calling for that need.

Politico describes Reid style this way: “As leader, Reid developed a no-nonsense, hard-ball style that came to define his stewardship. He muscled through Senate passage of the Affordable Care Act on Christmas Eve in 2009 on a straight party-line vote, when his party controlled 60 seats, enough to overcome a GOP filibuster. In 2013, Reid took the unprecedented step of invoking the so-called ‘nuclear option,’ a move that gutted filibuster rules for presidential nominations that critics said altered the deliberative nature of the body.”

I’m as certain as I am about anything that it doesn’t matter who the Senate Democrats choose as their next leader. He or she will develop sufficient enmity among Republicans to ensure that the upper legislative chamber will continue its level of dysfunction.

Harry Reid will become yesterday’s news in due course.