Wish I had seen this earlier: it would have changed the last post completely. Via Drudge:
Snowe Urges Obama to Drop Public Plan to Pass Health Overhaul
Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine said there is “no way” a health-care overhaul that includes a public option can pass the Senate.
Snowe, one of six negotiators on the Senate Finance Committee, said that to gain more Republican support, President Barack Obama should explicitly drop the idea of a federally backed insurance program to compete with private insurers such as Hartford, Connecticut-based Aetna Inc.
[snip]
“I’ve urged the president to take the public option off the table,” Snowe said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” program. “It’s universally opposed by Republicans,” Snowe said.
Call me nuts, but it sounds like the Democrats just ran out of possible Republicans to give them cover. Guess they’re going to have to run over their own moderates to pass this health care rationing bill, then.
Moe Lane
PS: Hey, do you know what would make currently-unhappy Republican grassroots activists smile more at their ostensible Senators?
Why, those Senators shutting down the government on procedural grounds in response to the Democrats trying to ram through health care rationing via reconciliation.
What about George LeMieux? He’s going to be a wild-card, since the most Liberal Republican Governor, ever, appointed him to keep that seat warm…
If Crist wants to get utterly blamed for Obamacare, well, that’s his lookout.
Be careful, Moe… all RINOlympia said is that the ‘public option is off the table’. She didn’t say the healthcare bill was dead, nor that there wouldn’t be something else that does the sme thing but just called something else, nor that teh ‘public option’ wouldn’t get removed for the vote and then added back in in conference.
Just hope someone doesn’t remind Senator McCain that he’d get a lot of favorable press if he changed his mind and crossed over.