In closed-door meeting, Lieberman & Blue Dogs put pressure on Ben Nelson to kill Public Option
November 4, 2009 by William K. Wolfrum
“MartyEisenstadt” poses for a photo with Sen. Joe Lieberman – moments before Lieberman and Blue Dog Dems invaded Sen. Ben Nelson’s office for some arm-twisting.
Sometimes, it takes a hoaxer to uncover a real story. This is a true story as related to me by Eitan Gorlin.
Martin Eisenstadt creators Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish were in Washington D.C. today, tooling about Congress pressing the flesh to promote their new book “I Am Martin Eisenstadt: One Man’s (Wildly Inappropriate) Adventures with the Last Republicans.” According to Gorlin, the two had given an autographed copy of the book to Sen. Tom Harkin (Mirvish once worked as a speechwriter for Harkin) as well as Sen. Ben Nelson.
Moments after the picture was taken, however, Gorlin informs me that Lieberman, along with Blue Dog Democrat Senators Mary Landreau and Blanche Lincoln and one Senator they couldn’t identify went into the office of fellow Blue Dog Ben Nelson, leaving the Eisenstadt duo behind.
“I posed for a the picture with Lieberman and he asked my name. I said “Marty Eisenstadt,’” said a laughing Gorlin, the face of the infamous hoax neocon pundit. “We were just kind of schmoozing with people outside Nelson’s office, and one by one, every moderate senator walked into Nelson’s office.
“There was no press or staff and they all looked very stern,” continued Gorlin. “It was obvious what was happening. Nelson is the swing vote on health care reform and everybody in Washington is talking about him.”
Nelson previously called the Public option a “Deal-Breaker,” but has recently softened his stance.
“He made it clear that he is open to the public option. That’s not a line in the sand where he says it must be off the table for him to move forward on health care reform,” Nebraska Democrat Jane Kleeb.
So will Nelson go against the public option now that it appears Lieberman – who has said he would filibuster the bill due to the public option – is actively campaigning against it? Gorlin said that while he wasn’t privy to what went on in the meeting, so many moderate Dems at Nelson’s office gavethe strong appearance of what went on inside.
“You’re going to see Nelson come out against the health care reform bill, I’m sure of it,” said Gorlin.
–WKW
Bill: Have you (or anyone else for that matter) independently confirmed that “Joe Lieberman” isn’t actually another of Gorlin & Mirvish’s hoaxes?
What is this compulsion that certain individuals have to be perceived as ‘middle of the road’ on everything? Is it that important to Joe to maintain his middleness? It’s like the lazy kid in school who finds out the hard way that answering ‘c’ on every question doesn’t really work.
* cough *
Like McCain is fighting for the telecoms, Lieberman is fighting for insurance companies. It’s not compulsion, just greed.
[...] “While we understand that we were voted in for specific reasons, we can’t allow our work in Washington to overshadow our need to remain in office,” said Blue Dog Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson. “We believe that after the 2036 elections, we’ll have the super hyper majority that we’ll need to accept that we have a mandate.” [...]