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Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry
Benjy Sarlin, @benjysarlin
12:01 AM on 10/02/2013
There’s already a rhythm to the shutdown fight: House Republicans huddle in the Capitol’s basement to plot their next move. They emerge with a plan. Then Harry Reid hits the Senate floor and swiftly dismisses it in the harshest possible terms.
“It’s just another wacky idea from the Tea Party-driven Republicans,” Reid said Tuesday, knocking the House’s new plan to temporarily fund portions of the government. “You can tell that the Tea Party Republicans still want to keep the government shut down.”
That was of a piece with Reid’s jabs on Monday, when he shot down three “Tea Party anarchist” bills attacking Obamacare as well as the House’s final pre-shutdown demand to go to conference.
The message was the same every time: either send a bill that funds the government without taking potshots at the health care law, or go home.
For Tea Party Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz, the current showdown is a brutal introduction to the cutthroat politics of Harry Reid–an unassuming man who plays politics to win, rules be damned.
Reid’s tactic in this battle has been to hold Democrats in line, and watch his foes turn on each other as they tank in the polls for resisting changes to Obamacare, which, ironically, rolled out the day the government shutdown.
more...
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/10/02/harry-reid-easy-to-underestimate-hard-to-defeat/?utm=fb
