Harry Reid put out a polite 34-word statement about Joe Lieberman on Thursday in the hopes of quelling the controversy over a report that Reid had accused Lieberman of double-crossing him on health care.
But Lieberman had other ideas.
Forty minutes after Reid’s e-mail hit reporters’ inboxes, Lieberman blasted out a message of his own. While Reid had said only that he enjoyed an “open and honest” relationship with Lieberman, the Connecticut independent went further — claiming that Reid had denied a New York Times account of a private conversation in which Reid allegedly accused Lieberman of betrayal.
But Reid’s staff has neither confirmed nor denied the Times’s account, despite requests for comment by POLITICO.
And so instead of closing the book on the episode, the senators’ dueling declarations served only to keep it alive another day — and to underscore the fact that Reid and Lieberman, who have one of the more unusual symbiotic relationships in a chamber defined by odd couples, can’t quite get on the same page.
On Wednesday, just as the uproar over Reid’s racially charged remarks about then-candidate Barack Obama was flagging, The New York Times Magazine posted a preview of Sunday’s profile on Reid that quoted the Nevada Democrat as saying Lieberman “double-crossed” him by suggesting he’d support a Reid-brokered compromise that he later opposed.
The story cited unnamed associates of the majority leader who said Reid was so enraged he briefly considered scuttling the whole bill before consenting to Lieberman’s demand.
Lieberman’s staff pushed back hard on that account — providing POLITICO with a private letter he wrote Reid in early December, setting out his concerns over a Reid-brokered expansion of Medicare three days before he aired those concerns on national TV. - Politico Story
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