WHAT DOES HARRY REID THINK HE'S GOING TO ACCOMPLISH WITH THIS?

It's nice that Harry Reid is having fun:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) communications director tried to give Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) a small kiss of death on Tuesday.

.@woodruffbets Senator Reid has always felt that Senator Cornyn is someone he can work with on a range of issues.

— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) December 10, 2013

The tweet by Reid communications director Adam Jentleson came a day after Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) jumped into the Republican primary against Cornyn....

Obviously, Reid is trying to help the more extreme Republican to win, on the assumption that a primary winner who's extreme will be a weaker general election candidate. But is there any reason to believe that that's true in Texas? Texas isn't a purplish state like Missouri (where Claire McCaskill's primary-season advertising helped get her the extremist opponent she wanted, Todd Akin, in 2012), nor is it bluish-purple Nevada, where Reid himself attacked electable GOP favorite Sue Lowden in the 2010 primary season and got the extremist opponent he wanted, Sharron Angle.

In Texas, if Stockman wins the primary, he'll win the general election -- it's that simple. I don't care how crazy he seems. I don't care how many infantile, trollish tweets he sends. I don't care how many ridiculous things he says about UN gun-grabbers or giving firearms to fetuses. I don't care if he makes regular appearances with Ted Nugent. All that will probably help him. He'll still win the general election in Texas if he wins the primary. He'll be like Rand Paul in Kentucky or Mike Lee in Utah (or, well, like Ted Cruz in Texas) -- a sure winner just because he's a Republican.

I'm not even sure whether there'll be much of a ripple effect in the rest of the country if Stockman says outrageous things during the campaign. Nothing he says will come off as outrageous enough to hurt him with white Texas voters, so I don't think there'll be a Todd Akin/Richard Mourdock effect -- the remarks made by those candidates made news nationwide because they alienated voters in their states.

Harry, if you hurt Cornyn, we're just likely to get is a worse Texas senator than either Cornyn or Cornyn's junior partner. So really, Harry -- don't encourage Stockman.