The politics in the usually clubby Senate have grown increasingly personal in recent weeks. Bunning calls Reid an 'idiot'

Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning called Harry Reid an “idiot” during a lunch meeting with other Republican senators this week — the latest sign that the Senate majority leader is getting under the skin of his GOP counterparts.

Bunning’s harsh words — confirmed by several people in the room — came in the midst of Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander’s presentation about Reid’s handling of the Senate floor. Bunning rose from his seat and, speaking loudly, read fundraising data that singled out Reid and other Senate Democrats for taking more money from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms than Republicans had.


After Bunning called Reid an “idiot,” another voice yelled out: “He is acting like an idiot.”

Asked to comment on the attack by Bunning, a former Major League Baseball pitcher, Reid spokesman Jim Manley said, “I’m not going to get into a war of words with a guy whose one of his claims to fame is throwing high, hard fastballs at opponents’ heads.”

Bunning's office did not respond to requests seeking comment.

While the two parties have been engaged in constant battle since President Barack Obama took office last year, the politics in the usually clubby Senate have grown increasingly personal in recent weeks.

In the wake of the superheated debate over health care reform, Reid and his confidants have used fierce rhetoric to portray the Republicans as tools of Wall Street who spread lies about the financial regulatory reform bill as a way to protect well-heeled donors. Meanwhile, Reid has been forcing the Republicans to vote again and again on the regulatory reform bill, hoping to jam at least one GOP senator into flipping to the Democratic side for fear of coming off as entirely obstructionist.

The tactic seems to be working; Republicans on Wednesday allowed debate to proceed on the bill. But hard feelings persist.

“People become irritated after a while,” Indiana Republican Sen. Dick Lugar said.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said that part of the Republican senators’ Tuesday lunch session “was focused on Reid” because “there’s a huge feeling of frustration over this.”

Privately, Republicans are even more critical of the majority leader, blaming him for the stalemate over financial services reform and other high-profile issues. They argue that Reid is being driven by internal Democratic polling data showing the majority party has to recapture the “reform” mantle rather than compromise — or risk huge losses in November.

In order to do that, Republicans say and Democrats privately acknowledge, Reid will have to play the “populist card” and paint the GOP as the defender of special interests while the majority leader and his Democratic colleagues are protecting average Americans.

And, Republicans say, he’s using tough talk along the way to fire up the Democratic base ahead of the November midterms — including the tough election Reid will face in Nevada.

“I think everyone thinks he is just gaming this thing politically and is a lot more interested in having issues right now rather than having solutions,” South Dakota Sen. John Thune, No. 4 in the Senate GOP leadership, told POLITICO. “There’s a lot of speculation about his own political prospects, as well as that of his party. Right now, party politics is trumping what’s right on some of these issues.”

Over the past week, Reid and some of his Democratic colleagues have taken direct aim at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), charging that he’s taking his marching orders from Wall Street after a private meeting with bank executives and the head of the Senate GOP’s campaign committee, Texas Sen. John Cornyn.

“Bipartisanship for Republican leaders means bringing Wall Street to the table, bring Wall Street banks into the room, and let them help you write the legislation,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

Reid seems to have realized that his attacks against McConnell may have gone too far, clarifying his comments Monday in an unusual floor statement saying, “I was in no way impugning the integrity of my friend from Kentucky.”

Manley, Reid’s spokesman, said it’s the Republicans who have been playing politics for more than a year by attempting to tie up the Democratic agenda and stalling even routine Senate business. He said the GOP has little credibility getting worked up about Reid’s words, charging that the Republicans have used harsh attacks and distorted criticisms against Democrats since Obama took office. Manley singled out terms such as “ death panels” that some Republicans used during the health care debate.

“We learned our lesson from the health care debate — it’s define or be defined,” Manley said. Asked how Democratic leadership wants the GOP defined, Manley said, without missing a beat, “the party of Wall Street. ... If they don’t like it, that’s too damn bad.”

Reid took his criticisms a step further Wednesday, calling Republicans “anti-American” for blocking the Wall Street reform bill and demanding changes in back-room negotiations rather than on the Senate floor.

“That’s not just a comment I would ordinarily expect coming from a United States senator about trying to negotiate an important piece of legislation,” said Cornyn, who — as chairman of the Senate GOP’s campaign committee — is trying to defeat Reid in the fall.

Manley acknowledged that Reid had probably made “a poor choice of words,” but he said the majority leader was right to feel frustrated.

“The American people elected them to legislate — not to filibuster everything and prevent us from doing our job.”

Republicans privately acknowledge that the Democrats’ “Party of No” attacks are starting to take their toll politically, and they’re beginning to push back that Reid himself is the leader of the “Party of No” because he’s always trying to end debate and force votes on bills.

What has provoked GOP ire is the number of times Reid has “filled the amendment tree” and immediately filed for cloture — an attempt to force votes without allowing senators to offer amendments on the floor. According to the Congressional Research Service, Reid has filled the tree 26 times since January 2007; the last five majority leaders combined filled the tree 29 times.

And Republicans accuse Reid of prematurely seeking to end debate, saying that during the past two years he has filed cloture motions 141 times soon after dropping a bill on the floor, and he has brought bills directly to the floor 36 times in the last two Congresses, bypassing congressional committees.

“I would say to my friend, the majority leader, that he’s rapidly becoming the leader of the ‘party of no’ by offering so many ‘no’ motions,” Alexander said on the floor Monday.

While Reid’s tactics have infuriated some Republicans, others say the back-and-forth between the party leaders is unavoidable — particularly in a fiercely contested election year.

“I hear Reid, what he’s saying as leader; I hear what my leader says; there’s a tit for tat on everything,” said Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby. “And we understand that.”