Politico:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid privately told fellow Democratic senators this week what he really thought of Speaker John Boehner.
“He’s a coward,” Reid angrily said, referring to Boehner’s private push for federal health care contributions for lawmakers and their staff. Boehner later backed legislation to end those subsidies in order to win points with House GOP conservatives. “He’s a coward!” Reid exclaimed.
Reid’s outburst — confirmed by several sources attending a Senate Democratic policy luncheon on Tuesday — is the latest example of how the relationship between the nation’s top political leaders is now brimming with acrimony, distrust and pettiness at a perilous time for the country’s economy.
Actually, Harry Reid has been saying essentially the same thing every day on the Senate floor, so this really isn't all that much of a scoop. But why does Politico think that this a problem?
The bad blood is making it harder for the two sides to trust each other in the increasingly bitter fight to reopen the government and keep the nation fiscally solvent.
Oh, come on. First all, it could have been worse: Reid could have called Boehner a crybaby. But the real point is that the government shutdown has absolutely nothing to do with personality clashes—certainly not between Reid and Boehner. It has everything to do with Republican opposition to Obamacare, the fact that John Boehner has been trapped by the GOP's right flank, and the fact that Democrats, for once, aren't simply rolling over and giving the GOP everything they demand.
Even if Politico could manage to get Boehner and Reid to share a cigar, it wouldn't change the fact that Boehner has got a contingent of tea party nutjobs pulling his strings. The thing that's breaking Washington isn't that Reid called Boehner a coward: It's that Boehner is acting like one.