Word: reided
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...with gasoline at $4 a gallon and rising, this was a terrible time to ask panicky voters to think about such a deal. And the Republican leaders were only too happy to exploit the high cost of energy. A G.O.P. strategy memo made public by Democratic leader Harry Reid summarized it this way: "The goal is for a theme (example: climate bill equals higher gas prices) each day, and the focus is much more on making political points than in amending the bill... or affecting policy...
...bill if it caused gasoline prices to rise by any amount. If that amendment ever went to a vote, it would force the bill's supporters to come out in favor of higher gas prices, and the Republican TV attack ads would produce themselves. No wonder moderate Dems wanted Reid to ditch the bill. At a meeting of Senate Democratic legislative directors, on Monday, June 2 - the day the Senate took up the bill - staffers were howling that Reid and Boxer were leading their bosses into the Valley of Death, forcing debate on a bill that didn't have...
...Reid brought the bill to the floor despite the exquisitely bad timing because climate change is his top domestic priority and because the issue won't be any easier to debate when a gallon of gasoline costs $5 or $6. Barack Obama was busy clinching the nomination and didn't show up for the debate (neither, for that matter, did John McCain). So, for the first couple of days of the fiasco, as the Republicans deployed parliamentary delay tactics and trotted out bogus studies that "proved" the bill would wreck the economy, the story line seemed to be this: What...
...sheets, and giant lightning bolts arced through the sky near the Capitol dome. Scientists caution that no single storm can be linked to climate change, but if ever there was heavy weather sent down by angry climate Gods, this must have been it. "It should give Senators pause," said Reid, and then he filed for a procedural vote to break the Republican filibuster. He had found his way out of the Valley of Death. "McConnell sent flowers to the clerks who had to read the bill aloud," says one Democratic policy adviser. "But Reid should have sent flowers to McConnell...
...When Reid's procedural vote finally came, on Friday morning, 48 Senators voted to move ahead with the debate, and 36 voted against. Boxer was happy to claim that a total of 54 were in favor of moving ahead - because six absent Senators, including Obama, McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Kennedy, had written letters saying they would have voted in favor had they been present. Fifty-four would have been significant - the first time a majority of Senators voted for climate action. But 48 is the number in the Congressional Record, and it only got that high because 10 moderate...