Are Dean Heller, Nevada Repub Senate candidate, and Sam Zell–who this morning asserted that under-employed people lack work because government has “incentivized” them to stop trying to find it–sipping at the same toxic water cooler? In the same news cycle as Zell made the offensive assertions in the post below–Steve Sebelius of the Las Vegas Review-Journal is reporting this about Heller, as tipped to me by maddowblog.com:

“In February 2010, Heller questioned the wisdom of extending unemployment benefits for people thrown out of work by the recession. He told the Elko County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner that the longer a person is out of work, the smaller the chance they’d eventually be re-employed. ‘Is the government now creating hobos?’ he asked, according to the Elko Daily Free Press.”

In a debate this week with his Senate opponent, Dem Shelley Berkley, Heller denied he’d ever made the “hobo” remark. It isn’t clear from Sebelius’s story if Berkley nailed him for it then, but post-debate Sebelius has him red-handed having said it.

Jeez, from “incentivized” to “hobos” in a few hours–I am forced to conclude that there are a lot of Repubs who hate the people they think of as lower-class. It can’t get much more conspicuous!