Breaking: Charlie Brown walks away, Lucy left holding football and whines that he "pulled the rug from under her." Lucy is appalled that, after they had agreed that this time she would not pull the ball away at the last minute and Charlie Brown was just about to start running for his kick, Charlie Brown had the gall to walk away because he suspected Lucy would pull the ball after all.
OK,OK, who cares about that? The story is the same, but it involves Harry Reid as Charlie Brown and Mitch McConnell as Lucy.
From the NYT: Deal on Jobs Shows Limits of Push for Bipartisanship.
How did Charlie BrownReid know that LucyMcConnell was about to pull the ball? I don't know, but how about more than a decade of the same old same old. According to the article:
... Republican leaders had made no firm commitment to support the measure and they feared they could face conservative attacks for extraneous provisions like disaster aid for Arkansas and Mississippi.
No kidding? You mean that GOPosaurs might have gone along in "bipartisan" talks only to vote not at the end and paint the bill as an aberration?
More of just how "reasonable" Republicans were being:
Republicans were more receptive to the bipartisan jobs proposal than they have been to Democratic initiatives this year, but the leadership had not pledged its backing on the floor. On Thursday, before Mr. Reid pared back the bill, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, called it a work in progress.
Where have we heard this story before? Does it sound like HCR to anyone? Here's more deja-vu for you:
Some Democrats noted that Mr. Baucus had spent months negotiating with Mr. Grassley on health care legislation only to come away empty-handed, ultimately costing the Senate valuable time on the issue.
The reason given in the article for Reid to walk away is:
Democrats said Mr. Reid’s hand was forced by objections from rank-and-file Democrats that the measure was not focused tightly enough on job creation and included too many corporate tax breaks they viewed as concessions to Republicans.
My opinion is that, in a rare moment of lucidity, Reid realized that the "bipartisan" jobs bill was going to be savaged by GOPosaurs as a 300-page monstrosity that didn't do anything for jobs.