The Trouble With Harry

Arlen Spector asks, Is Harry Reid up to the job? HotAir:

A lot of Republicans have wondered the same thing about Arlen Specter over the years. But the fact is, in a curious way Specter’s career of maverick gasbaggery actually puts him on solid footing to ask whether Harry Reid has the wattage to lead the Senate. Coming from a bona fide conservative, the question could be dismissed as mere partisanship. Coming from the Senator from Scotland, it comes off as something closer to statesmanship.

Sen. Arlen Specter today challenged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s ability to serve as leader, saying the Nevada Democrat sabotaged progress on long-stalled spending and taxes bills by calling Republican lawmakers “puppets” for President Bush.

“I really wonder if he’s up to the job when he resorts to that kind of statement, which can only further the level of rancor and animosity with that kind of an insulting comment,” Mr. Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, said on the Senate floor.

The criticism punctuated the stalemate in the Democrat-led Congress, which is fast approaching the end of the session without a fix to tax increases set to clobber middle-class families next month and without passing 11 of the 12 annual appropriation bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

Meanwhile, Mr. Reid is poised to call another vote linking emergency war funds to a plan for a U.S. pullout from Iraq. The same measure failed in a vote lost month, as did 63 similar Iraq votes this year.

Read on. The trouble with Harry is the country is stuck with him. For now. And he can't even boss Nancy around.