{"id":11901,"date":"2012-08-11T08:44:09","date_gmt":"2012-08-11T13:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=11901"},"modified":"2012-08-11T08:50:02","modified_gmt":"2012-08-11T13:50:02","slug":"biden-mcconnell-decided-to-withhold-all-cooperation-even-before-we-took-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2012\/08\/11\/biden-mcconnell-decided-to-withhold-all-cooperation-even-before-we-took-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden: McConnell decided to withhold all cooperation even before we took office"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post<\/em> has the story Biden: McConnell decided to withhold all cooperation even before we took office<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Grunwald has Joe Biden on the record making a striking charge. Biden says that during the transition, a number of Republican Senators privately confided to him that Mitch McConnell had given them the directive that there was to be no cooperation with the new administration \u2014 because he had decided that \u201cwe can\u2019t let you succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the relevant passage, from page 207:<\/p>\n

Biden says that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any cooperation on many votes. \u201cI spoke to seven different Republican Senators, who said, `Joe, I\u2019m not going to be able to help you on anything,\u2019 he recalls. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. \u201cThe way it was characterized to me was: `For the next two years, we can\u2019t let you succeed in anything. That\u2019s our ticket to coming back,\u2019\u201d Biden says.<\/p>\n

The vice president says he hasn\u2019t even told Obama who his sources were, but Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania both confirmed they had conversations with Biden along these lines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now is it clear enough that the lack of bipartisanship in Congress does not come equally from both parties?<\/p>\n

Do you suppose that when Scott Brown went to the Senate that Mitch McConnell didn’t tell him about the plan?\u00a0 Yet, Scott Brown tries to make out that he is the neutral voice in the war between two extremes.\u00a0 He actually stands in the middle between one extreme and moderation.\u00a0 That still puts him way toward the extreme.<\/p>\n

Does this make you even angrier at Obama for bending over backwards to get Republican cooperation when his administration was told in no uncertain terms that there would be no cooperation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post has the story Biden: McConnell decided to withhold all cooperation even before we took office. Grunwald has Joe Biden on the record making a striking charge. Biden says that during the transition, a number of Republican Senators privately confided to him that Mitch McConnell had given them the directive that there was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11901"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11903,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11901\/revisions\/11903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}