(January 11, 2010 - Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images North America)
It appears that good ole Harry Reid can’t get out of his own way these days. First it was his “racially insensitive” remarks and now evidence has surfaced that proves the Senate Majority Leader was anything but a willing participant to bipartisan negotiations for health care reform. The New York Times Magazine has released an excerpt of its soon-to-be released article on the Majority Leader that tells the story of an angry Reid ranting to his associates that Sen. Joe Lieberman “double-crossed” him on health care reform. Oh but wait, it gets even better. He also throws a few jabs at Olympia Snowe and the time he “wasted” dealing with her on the issue and eventually threatens to deny Lieberman’s demands and “let the bill just go down.” I am so glad this guy didn’t step down. We couldn’t have enjoyed this if he was back in Nevada in retreat from his use of the word “Negro.” OK, we would have enjoyed it, but it wouldn’t have been quite as entertaining or absolutely damning for the Democrats and their “we tried to negotiate” position.
Reid reportedly accused the Connecticut independent of blindsiding him last month when he went on “Face the Nation” and declared that he’d have “a hard time” backing a Reid-brokered Medicare compromise in the health care bill. But Leiberman is pushing back hard — and to make his case, he has provided POLITICO with a private letter he wrote Reid setting out his concerns before he aired them on national TV.
In a preview of a magazine profile of Reid posted Wednesday on the newspaper’s website, reporter Adam Nagourney writes that Reid was infuriated by Lieberman’s Dec. 13, 2009, appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Reid felt betrayed, Nagourney reports, because Lieberman had reportedly given him the impression he would back leadership during a closed-door meeting two days earlier.
After Lieberman’s bombshell interview, according to Nagourney, an incensed Reid fumed to unnamed associates, “He double-crossed me. … Let’s not do what he wants. Let the bill just go down.”
Eventually, Reid — who in early 2009 shielded Lieberman from attempts to strip him of a key committee chairmanship — relented and ditched the Medicare plan to salvage the bill.
“As I look back it was a waste of time dealing with [Snowe],” Reid is quoted as saying about the White House in a forthcoming New York Times Magazine piece, “because she had no intention of ever working anything out.”
But wait! There’s more. Brian Beutler reported yesterday that Reid said it was “a waste of time” dealing with Olympia Snowe, also in the magazine preview. Brian saying of Reid’s assessment: Still, that’s unusually blunt language. It could easily raise eyebrows. Oh, please, “raise eyebrows”? Honestly.
What Others Are Saying…
Brilliant at Breakfast, Left in the West, The Reaction, Hullabaloo, Don Surber, The Plum Line, and Glenn Thrush’s Blog
Via Memeorandum
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