We didn’t have time to attend the anti-Harry Reid news conference call held this morning by former Gov. Bob List, not that his excellency or his peeps were good enough to let us know when it was being held. But if the report in the Las Vegas Sun is any indication, it may have been just as well.

List, now the Republican national committeeman for Nevada, attacked Reid after the Senate majority leader managed to hold his caucus together Saturday evening and garner the 60 votes needed to begin debate on the health-care reform bill in the Senate. A total of 39 Republicans voted against the motion.

List attacked Reid on several fronts, each more unbelievable than the last. We stress we are not making any of this up. (Hat tip to the Sun’s Washington D.C. scribe Lisa Mascaro for the quotage.)

“I think it’s incorrect to say these people don’t have health care,” List said during a conference call arranged by the Republican National Committee. “The public hospital treats anybody who walks in the door, in the emergency room, or claims an emergency or they need health care. So it’s a misnomer to say these people are without health care. They may be without insurance, many of them are.”

Excuse us, but are you fucking kidding? Did he actually say the poor have health care in the ER? The most expensive taxpayer-supported medicine there is, only available when you’re at death’s door? That’s his idea of health care? If we didn’t know better, we’d suspect that this “Bob List” character was really a Democratic plant designed to make all Republicans look like heartless assholes, telling the poor they’re on their own. But we do know better. List actually is a Republican telling the poor they’re on their own!

“It’s the wrong direction for the country and the wrong direction for Nevada, and Harry Reid is going to pay the price next year,” said the former governor, who is now an official with the Nevada Republican Party. “This is a clear abuse of power that Nevadans are not going to tolerate.”

Not to repeat ourselves, but are you fucking kidding? An abuse of power? Reid did what he does best, counting votes and securing commitments behind closed doors to reach his goal. That’s called using power, not abusing it. Did Tom DeLay abuse power when he brought “The Hammer” down on wayward Republicans? Or did he do his job, and collect votes? And since the majority — in America and in Nevada — approve of health care reform (and the public option) how can spurring a vote on it be “the wrong direction” for the country or Nevada?

List may or may not know what we do: The only way Reid is going to pay a price next year is if he fails to get something passed at the end of this process. (We fear it will be a compromised, watered-down, shadow of what health care reform ought to be, but failing to pass anything at this point would be far worse.)

The former governor called the 2,074-page bill “so excessive, so liberal, so radical.” He said that Nevadans would support a more incremental approach to health care reform that includes some elements of the Democratic plan, such as the prohibition on insurance companies denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, but drops others, such as the proposed public option and penalties on those who do not carry insurance or businesses that fail to offer it.

OK, are we being punked? Is Ashton Kutcher standing outside our office door, about to pounce? Because this is getting ridiculous. Do you know what an “excessive, liberal, radical” bill would be? How about socialized medicine, the likes of which they have in Great Britain? Or a national single-payer system, such as the one in Canada? How about Medicare for all, in which we keep the private doctors and hospitals, but have the government pay the bills? Those would be radical reforms. Guess what? Not a single one of them was seriously considered in this debate. Instead, we started with a compromise, and it’s only gotten worse from there.

If List thinks a health-care bill with a public option (that includes a state opt-out, for God’s sake) is “so excessive, so liberal, so radical,” we better make sure he’s got good insurance himself, because if he ever sees real health care reform, the poor bastard will keel over of a heart attack!