No Runny Eggs

In less than 72 hours, Ben Nelson went from centrist Democrat to Ashley Dupre in comparison to Mary Landrieu’s saloon girl pricing commands.

On Wednesday, reports were out that argued that Ben Nelson could not support any form of placebocare that didn’t have the sign off of Nebraska’s chapter of national right to life.  Also on Wednesday, The Weekly Standard published a poll showing that while 51% of Nebraskans approved of Nelson’s job, 67% opposed placebocare and 61% said they would be less likely to support Nelson if he voted for placebocare.

In spite of the risk to his political career, today after receiving lots of financial goodies for Nebraska and a poorly worded attempt at hiding the fact that abortion will ultimately still be required by placebocare, Nelson has agreed to vote for cloture.  Assuming there are no other Democrat whores whose conscience can be bought, it appears that the Senate will be passing Harry Reid’s version of placebocare. 

With the now apparent, imminent passage of placebocare, a question arises.  With the polls solidly against placebocare in places like Nebraska and other fly over states, how do Democrat Senators expect to pass placebocare out of the Senate and not receive reelection repercussions?  Easy, they’ll pull the “John Kerry!

in October 2003,  Kerry voted against an $87 billion supplemental funding bill for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He did support an alternative bill that funded the $87 billion by cutting some of President Bush’s tax cuts.  Whenit was apparent the alternative bill would not pass, he decided to go on record as not supporting the legislation to fund soldiers.  It was after this combination of positions and votes that Kerry uttered his now infamous quote:

I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.

Cloture, or the approval to proceed, requires 60 votes in the Senate.  This is the issue that has stymied Harry Reid until now.  However, the final vote for the passage of a bill, only requires a simple majority or 51 votes.  In fact, if the vote is split at 50/50, Vice President Joe Biden would cast the deciding vote.  While it now appears that Reid has spread enough of our money around to get 60 votes for cloture, you can bet that there will be no where near 60 votes for the final votes.

Between today and whenever the final vote comes, you can bet that Senators like Jim Webb, Ben Nelson, Byron Dorgan, Evan Byah and a few others, will be talking about how they are yet “unsure” as to how they will vote on the final vote.  They will talk about the need to “move the process forward.”  In fact, I’m certain that several Democrat Senators will vote against the final passage of the bill.  Not too many, something less than 10 will vote against the bill, but there will be some who believe voting against the final bill will give them political cover.

By voting against the final bill, these supposed “moderate” Democrats will go back to their states and attempt to claim that they weren’t really for the atrocity that is placebocare.  When they return to their states, these senators will tell their constituents that they voted for the bill before they voted against the bill.  Actually, this is an incredibly difficult maneuver as it is not the “John Kerry” but the “Reverse John Kerry.”  I doubt you’ll see many of these folks successfully execute the move.  Several of those attempting this move will get zeros, not from the Russian judges but from their home state constituents!

If you haven’t seen it, here’s the last ditch plea from the Republican Senators.  If you have a phone and have a Democrat Senator, especially ones about to attempt the “Reverse Kerry,” call them and let them know that no matter how hard they try to explain otherwise, they will be held accountable for all votes that had any part in allowing placebocare to become law!