Believe me: This isn’t the first time our vaunted Senate Majority Leader has made baseless accusations with little or no evidence (via The Daily Caller):
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday he was “very comfortable” with the prospect of defending an open seat in his chamber should Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry be tapped for a Cabinet position, and slammed outgoing Republican Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who would likely run to replace Kerry.“I saw during the campaign his plea for bipartisanship,” Reid said of Brown, who ran as a moderate and independent Republican willing to work across the aisle in his ultimately unsuccessful race against Elizabeth Warren. “That is a big joke.”
“He is a travesty. He is one of the most partisan people that ever served here,” Reid went on. “He could have saved Citizens United, he could have been the 60th vote on that and many other things.”
“So I don’t need a lecture from him on bipartisanship,” Reid concluded. “He should go look in a mirror.”
Where to begin? The truth is that in 2011 Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) was ranked the second most bipartisan Senator in Washington, and, according to the same Congressional Quarterly study, only voted with his party 54 percent of the time. That’s a pretty distinguished track record of bipartisanship -- especially at a time of increased polarization and gridlock inside the corridors of Congress. By contrast, of course, Senator Reid (so far) has voted with his party 94 percent of the time on 433 votes since the start of the 112th Congress -- and voted with his party 95 percent of the time on 689 votes during the 111th Congress, according to the Washington Post. In other words, who’s the real “partisan” lawmaker, again?
Reid, incidentally, is also the same partisan who stood on the floor of the Senate Chamber and maliciously accused Governor Mitt Romney of not paying any taxes for ten years, citing an anonymous and disgruntled former Bain Capital investor as “evidence.” He lied. Now, as Guy recently reported, he’s determined to pass filibuster “reform” in a concerted effort to limit GOP lawmakers from blocking legislation they disagree with (or want to amend) in the upper chamber -- a hypocritical and shameless political maneuver he explicitly warned about when Senate Democrats were the minority party. Sadly, it seems, the Majority Leader’s rank hypocrisy and blind partisanship is on full display these days…and becoming more and more noticeable.