I was torn. Bad for concience, my country if it passes. But potentially good if it can push some moderates into our column. Ben Nelson mat be ready to completely jump off boat now.

But now there is even more reason to fight this odious bill.

And so “Reidcare” will burn with Nelson’s amendment. Snowe and Collins did us a favor.

I wonder how my congress critter (Driehaus – OH 01) is going to vote on this bill if it goes through comittee and doesn’t have the strong pro-life language, or if it goes straight back to the house. He was whining once already on a vote where he voted in support of funding for planned parenthood, even though he is supposedly pro-life.

Pro-life/Pro-choice doesn’t matter to me, the other implications of this bill are more important, I do so much want him to march over the cliff and vote for this thing if it is going to pass, so that come 2010, I can dance when I vote against him.

This development puts the ball back into the Republican court. Now the Senate GOP can kill it, but they need to keep Snowe and Collins in line (no easy task). The leadership had better pull out all the stops on pressuring them. They can also target a few of the Dems who voted in support of the Nelson amendment. I am not sure if they can flip any of the weasels but it is worth a shot.

Finally this also somewhat functions as a failsafe mechanism in case it passes the Senate and goes into reconciliation. With only a select few deciding what goes and stays in reconciliation, it is extremely unlikely the extremely liberal Dem leadership appoints any Dem pro-lifers to the committee. They will only need 51 votes in the Senate, but they do not have any votes to spare in the house.

We are still fighting under long odds, but they are better odds than before.