The most interesting segment of this lengthy Hill piece on Republicans' sequestration intransigence has very little to do with Republicans:
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she would support eliminating tax subsidies for major oil-and-gas companies.
But [Senate Majority Leader] Reid left that proposal out [of his sequestration-avoidance package] in part because of opposition from Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska), who represent oil-rich states and face reelection next year.
Who's the most vocal proponent of eliminating tax subsidies for major oil and gas companies? Right. Harry Reid's party leader, President Obama. And who will omit an assault-weapons ban, as requested by the president, from any gun-control legislation? Right again. Harry Reid.
And yet Reid is politically blameless, or at least he should be, since proposing such commonsense measures as the elimination of oil subsidies and a ban on assault weapons would only increase the odds of a Republican Senate in 2015. Meanwhile, progressive stalwarts such as Ed Schultz will persist in deluding the progressive rank and file with the easy fiction that if Republicans were out of the way, so too would be oil subsidies and assault weapons.
Which I'm sure makes Harry Reid happy, but it ain't the truth.
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