REALLY? WHAT THE HELL MAKES YOU SO SURE?

Tim F. at Balloon Juice:

Here Is An Idea

Write a decent health care bill and dare Olympia Snowe to filibuster it. She won't.

Nonsense. If "decent health care bill" means "bill with a public option in place" (i.e., not triggered) -- which it obviously does -- then of course she'll filibuster it. How many more ways does she have to define that as a line in the sand before we believe her?

"The public option would be problematic," Snowe told MSNBC's Morning Joe when asked what changes to the bill could cost Democrats her vote....

Snowe also indicated opposition to an "opt-out" public plan that would allow states to choose whether to participate....

Sorry, I was prematurely happy in response to her vote yesterday. It's clear now that the vote wasn't an indication that she's going to be "reasonable" -- it was an indication that, if what she considers a line in the sand is crossed, she intends to leverage the appearance of having been reasonable yesterday in order to make not being reasonable in the future seem reasonable -- for her and for others. What I mean is, if there's a public option and (inevitably) she's one of the senators filibustering it, then filibustering will be defined as reasonable by the purveyors of conventional wisdom precisely because it's something even the eminenly reasonable Olympia Snowe is doing.

Public option advocates, find a way around her on this. You'll need it.