What a hack.
Via Weekly Standard:
Following the vote on the Blunt-Nelson amendment that would allow Americans to opt out of Obamacare’s health benefits mandates for moral or religious reasons, Senate majority leader Harry Reid said the vote showed Republicans are beholden to an “extreme ideological” faction.
But what about the three Democratic senators — Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania — who voted the same way as Republicans on the Blunt amendment? “I have the greatest respect for what Senator Ben Nelson did, what Bob Casey did, and what Joe Manchin did,” Reid said. “That’s their privilege. We don’t demand everyone vote the same way.”
But Reid couldn’t explain why Republicans were extremists by voting for the Blunt amendment and Casey, Manchin, and Nelson were not extremists for voting the same way. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York similarly struggled to explain the apparent contradictions.
“This is one of the most extreme amendments that’s come up,” Schumer told reporters. One reporter then thought of Bob Casey’s vote for the Blunt amendment. “Well, Senator Casey has extreme — you know, Senator Casey, if you look at his overall record it’s a lot different than Scott Brown’s,” Schumer replied. “The bottom line is he’s a person of conviction, he wrestled with this. Everyone knows his views on the issue of choice. . . . But they’re heartfelt and they’re out of conviction, and I respect it.”