Dems Get Snowe Jobbed

Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe is picking up her bipartisanship ball and taking it home, apparently annoyed that she is not being feted as Queen Of All Health Care Reform by Obama and company. Pitching a fit, she just can't bring herself to support anything short of the Olympia Snowe Health Care Reform Act of 2009.

Senate Democrats are going to have to move forward on healthcare without a single Republican supporter after Sen. Olympia Snowe said Tuesday she could not back the Finance Committee’s bill.

Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) failed to win any Republican backer despite weeks of intense negotiations behind closed doors to strike a deal.

Snowe (Maine), who was one of three Republicans who backed the $787 billion economic stimulus package, was being lobbied heavily by the White House, and some centrists view her refusal to strike a deal with Baucus as troubling. But concerns about how the plan would be paid for prompted her to back away in the hours before its release.

“I do have concerns and I’m not sure they can be addressed before he issues [legislation] tomorrow,” Snowe said.

Faced with the prospect of having to pass legislation without Republican votes, Obama’s chief political adviser David Axelrod met with Senate and House Democrats on Tuesday to stress the importance of party unity on healthcare reform — a message most directly aimed at centrists who now are critical to its passage.

Democrats control 59 seats in the Senate. Without a single Republican vote, they would be forced to advance healthcare using a budgetary maneuver that requires only a simple majority.

As I said time and time again, not a single Republican was ever going to vote for robust, affordable health care reform that the Democrats could take credit for. It was laughable to think that Republican centrists like Snowe or her Maine colleague Susan Collins would ever cast a yes vote on an issue that would doom the Republicans to back-bencher status for years, and it was stupidity to even pursue it for this long. Too much time has been wasted, and it has resulted in 59 votes, not 60 if Sen. Kennedy was still with us. That's directly the fault of this idiotic and quixotic effort to get Republicans on board with a plan they will never support in any way, shape, or form.

To reconciliation it is, then. Pass a real plan, with the public option. No need for caving now. Get it done, and to hell with the Republicans in Congress.