Washington Examiner: (title h/t Instapundit)
After all his complaints about Republican obstruction this year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressed frustration last night after Republicans helped guarantee a floor vote on a measure he supports.
The Nevada Democrat has accused Senate Republicans of chicanery for voting to advance to the Senate floor a Democratic constitutional amendment allowing Congress to regulate all campaign speech and spending.
After Monday’s bipartisan 79-18 vote, Reid vented to reporters that Republicans were trying to “stall” the Senate, indicating that he never intended for the campaign finance amendment by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., to go to a real floor debate.
This is really going to backfire on Reid.
It is basically a bill to change the First Amendment.
The debate is going to be rich.
It will be amusing to see Harry Reid arguing against the First Amendment. That will make for a great campaign ad. Wouldn’t surprise if he withdrew the bill.
What’s the matter Harry?
Are you surprised that the RINOs called you bluff, or is it that they’re dirty enough to follow your lead?
Well Harry… which is it?
Next time, for change, do what you mean and mean what you do Harry. Oh that’s right, you’re all about doing nothing…
Yet more evidence that these politicians are nothing but scum who don’t care about doing what is right for the country, but in playing idiotic games of political theater to try to bamboozle the masses. Really….why are so many people so willing to vote for such noxious hemorrhoids like Reid?
This makes absolutely no sense regarding Harry Reid’s behavior. He has blocked nearly every House Bill from going to the floor of the Senate for a vote, but along comes a controversial anti-1st Amendment bill sponsored by a Democrat, Harry wants the bill to pass, he lets the bill go to the floor, but Harry is upset because he didn’t want any actual debate on an amendment to the Constitution? How very tyrannical of him.
Harry gets caught up in his own web. He is Angry? …. Poetic!
There is something about arrogance…there is no humility in it…arrogance sooner or later will trip people like Harry up…kind of like now.
Republicans, have they discovered they have a spine after all? Let’s hope.
@Ditto:
He didn’t want it to pass. It wanted it blocked by Republicans so he would have more time to ramble on about the Koch brothers and how the Republicans blocked a measure to reduce their influence. Now, Democrats have to either publicly support an amendment to restrain free speech or oppose a Democrat proposal. Sweet.
Sad it is that such games are necessary, but when all the Democrats do is play these games, the Republicans better gird up to beat them at it.
@Bill:
Except we know full well that Reid and the Democrats really do want such a Constitutional amendment. The Democratic party leadership and party operatives have been talking about it amongst themselves and Harry Reid has made it quite clear that he supports such an amendment as it is the only way they can block the SCOTUS from finding what they want to do as unconstitutional. The problem for the Democrats is the rest of the nation would never allow such an amendment to pass openly if they knew about it. Reid did not have to let it go to the floor, but it is clear that he decided to in order to create Democrat talking points for the November elections. His devious eagerness to use this to bash Republicans and their donors, made him overconfident in that he thought the Republicans would automatically vote against it, giving the Dems their talking point. Now, not only is the cat out of the bag, but they are going to have to debate this offensive amendment change in the light of day. This is a big win in a number of ways for the Republicans, because this Democratic plan is exposed, the Democrats who argue in favor for it will be cooking their own goose (except amongst their radical far-left loons), and (!) There is no way that Udall will ever again win Senate re-election, having to defend this despicable anti-first amendment proposal to New Mexico’s voters.
@Ditto: No doubt Reid and his ilk would like a muzzle on the 1st Amendment, but they only want it selectively applicable. For instance, Reid loves to bemoan every dollar the Koch brothers put into conservative causes (yet he fails to mention the millions they sink into charitable efforts, such as education or cancer research) but has no problem whatsoever with the Nazi sympathizer Soros putting $500,000 towards getting Perry indicted for issuing a veto in Texas or the millions he puts towards liberal propaganda.
No, Reid wants no Constitutional amendment; that would be too heavy-handed, to general, to unbiased. He wants to target, as the IRS does, conservatives and Republicans, and he wants to do it through cheap talk from the Senate floor.
But now he has to debate it and vote on it. Harry, the walking corpse, must be spinning in his cesspool grave.