Is Harold Ford Stupid...

[babylonsister]

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2010/3/7/151320/7609

Is Harold Ford Stupid...

by BooMan
Sun Mar 7th, 2010 at 03:13:20 PM EST


...or evil? He appeared on Meet the Press this morning and displayed an astonishing lack of understanding of the political landscape. Hopefully, you all are familiar with the basic lay of the land. Because there are NO Republican votes available in the Senate, the only way to pass the health care reforms is for the House to scrap the bill they carefully crafted in its entirety and embrace the Senate version down to every dotted i and crossed t. And, because the House is not inclined to see all their work thrown out, they want the Senate to agree to pass some amendments to their bill in a separate sidecar process under the budget reconciliation rules that only require 51 Senate votes. David Gregory asked Ford what could be done to pass the Senate version of the bill through the House, not how to get the Senate to pass the Senate bill through reconciliation. Watch:

DAVID GREGORY: Har-- Harold Ford, you've been in Congress. This is also a question of process. Not just reconciliation, which again we'll get to, (UNINTEL) budget measure. How do the no votes become yes votes in the House? There were 39 no votes among House Democrats. And there could be 11 more that become no over this abortion language, which you heard Secretary Sebelius suggest-- address. How do they get the votes?

HAROLD FORD JR.: Two ways. First, you (UNINTEL)-- Democrats in the Senate were able to convince some Senate Republicans. Scott Brown, Voinovich, Kit Bond, and a few others, to vote in favor of a jobs bill that Senator Hatch and Senator Schumer played a key role in putting together. You've got to find those areas and those instances where you can bring people over. I think E.J.'s points are well taken. The only challenge is, I think if there were votes for reconciliation. I know we're gonna come to this in a few minutes.

If there were votes for reconciliation, it probably would have already been done. So, the question is whether or not if there are not enough votes to pass by reconciliation, do you reach out to those Democrats or do you begin to reach out to some Republicans? When L.B.J. and the Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen worked to pass civil rights legislation, they worked together.

It may be that the President and the team now can find ways to bring a few Republicans over. And if you have to vote with the reconciliation vote, wouldn't it be amazing if you lost a few Democrats and picked up a few Republicans? It might make it easier--

(OVERTALK) (ORRIN HATCH STARES AT FORD WITH BEMUSED ASTONISHMENT)

HAROLD FORD JR.: I don't think (UNINTEL) out of reach. Warren Buffet was on one of our sister networks. On NBC's sister networks this week. And said, "Look, if plan A, meaning the status quo is what we would have to accept." He's not for that. If plan B is the only option, he would take it. Which is the Senate bill. But really a plan C is needed. It might be that a plan C, which is a reconciliation approach could be adopted, if we found ways to win some Republicans over, hold on to the core of Democrats, and pass a meaningful health reform here.

It looks for all the world like the Democrats have the votes to do reconciliation in the Senate. What's not clear is whether we have the votes to pass the Senate bill in the House. Ford is either unaware of that or is pretending to be unaware of that. Moreover, his solution is to do something to convince a few Republicans to pass the bill through reconciliation, but the Senate has already passed their bill and the Republicans hate it. In order to amend it enough that a few Republicans would vote for it, they'd have to redo the whole bill through reconciliation, and only elements that have some impact on the budget can be changed that way. It sounds like Ford wants to say that the Democrats should just give up, start over with a clean sheet of paper, and pass whatever it is that a few Senate Republicans will support (the Republican talking points). But, instead, he recommends that the Democrats plough forward using the exact same reconciliation process that the Republicans are comparing to the Nuremberg Laws.

It's hard to know to what degree this is disingenuous shilling and to what degree it is mule-headed stupidity.

[itsrobert]

1. Probablly smart enough to get his name right

?

[Lord Helmet]

2. Yes he is and so is his brother Harold.

:hi:

[babylonsister]

4. Bwhaha! Booman boo-booed, but got it right in the story. Thanks-

I didn't catch it! :hi:

[HughMoran]

3. Rhetorical questions are the best

:rofl:

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. Both

[Ozymanithrax]

6. No, but he does have a set of beliefs and an agenda not friendly to progressives ideals.

Disagreeing with us doesn't make him stupid, it just makes him a disagreeable sob.

[Lint Head]

7. Deception is in his family.

Complicating Harold Ford, Jr’s past bid for the Tennessee Governor’s mansion is the fact that Uncle John, a former state Senator, was sentenced to prison for taking bribes. The Memphis Commercial Appeal

John Ford was sentenced to 66 months in prison for his conviction of accepting $55,000 in bribes in the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz public corruption investigation.

[Marsala]

8. Stupidity gets my vote

Mind you, the media has been pretty dumb about reconciliation as well. They totally failed to understand Conrad's explanation of how reconciliation wouldn't be used to pass a new bill but will be used to pass a patch on the current bill.

[xultar]

9. I think he is more of a greedy bastard. Harold Ford is the Black Male version of Sarah Palin

in that he's a greedy, media whore. And we all know that greed makes people do stupid things. Ford wants to be in the limelight, he wants power, he wants people to love him and he'll do anything for it to happen, just like Sarah Palin.

Problem is he looks like an opportunistic asshole in the process and he doesn't know again, just like Sarah Palin.

[SharonAnn]

14. He's arrogant. He's slick. He's the bankers' friend. I don't know if he's stupid.

Oh, and he wants the healthcare bill scrapped.

[FrenchieCat]

10. He's way over his head......

he doesn't know what he wants to be,
let alone what anyone else is.

I think he thought he was going to be that Black Senator who goes on to become President,
and he can't get over the fact that someone beat him to it! :rofl:

[butterfly77]

11. K&R!

orrin hatch was right Ford fits right in with their party. Notice how he always wants to tell the Dems what they need to do he needs to change his party he's in the wrong one..

[democrat2thecore]

12. DINO - Always has been. -nt

[jenmito]

13. When I saw him talking about getting a few Repubs. on board, I couldn't believe it.

He really IS stupid if he thinks ANY Repubs. will EVER get on-board with the HCR bill. Doesn't he realize that the only reason Obama was "trying" to get some Repubs. on-board was to show the people that they won't join in no matter WHAT?!

[rufus dog]

15. Babylonsister, I know you have the answer and the question is rhetorical

The question is "Does Ford have an end of a picked fence stuck firmly in his ass or is he really two dimensional? The dude tries so hard to be everything to everyone and is either stuck on the fence or literally lacks depth to the extent that if you turned him sideways you wouldn't see him. So he throws together some Repub points with some Dem points and mixes them together and thinks he has come up with some magic solution.

[saltpoint]

16. Stupidity can't be ruled out, although there's a kind of stubbornness

to Harold Ford that is all the more offensive in him because it's mixed with a megadose of self-regard.

The man is full of himself.

Gillibrand is farther down the list of my favorite Democratic Senators than say, Feingold, Boxer, and Whitehouse, but on the other hand, I would have bet a handsome sum that she would have kicked Ford's sorry ass all the back to the Smokies. As one DU poster put it, Ford dramatically underestimated Gillibrand and way over-estimated himself.

I think Gillibrand would not only have won the primary had it gone forward but Ford's ego would have been in traction for years afterward.

Stubbornness, a sneering assumption that he could shake the carpet-bagger image, and an inflated sense of his own importance don't add up to "excellent public servant" on my ledger.

[Green_Lantern]

17. reconciliation isn't all it's cracked up to be...

First of all both bills are handed over to a budget combine which combines the bills and it may look very different when it comes out. From there it goes to the Parliamentarian who will remove anything that he thinks has no relevance the budget, I'm thinking the mandate will be removed. Unfortunately most of the regulation on drug and insurances will probably be removed because they aren't budgetary.

I honestly can see this bill still having a chance of not passing Congress if the Parliament removes whatever progressive measures are in this bill. I hope the govt. option ends up back in the bill.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

18. Yes. (nt)