Senate Pushes for Sleazy Maneuver to Pass Anti-Gun ObamaCare Database

Charles Babington of the Associated Press reported yesterday about the Senate Democratic leadership’s latest sleazy maneuver to pass the anti-gun health care bill.  And this is contemptible even by their admittedly low standards:

White House and Democratic officials are quietly talking with key senators, hoping to craft a thread-the-needle strategy on health care with little or no help from Republicans.  The officials are asking a handful of moderate Democrats to do something that might be hard to explain to voters:  Cast a Senate vote that could be interpreted as favoring a bill that the lawmakers ultimately plan to oppose on final passage.

In other words, they are trying to convince the swing votes — Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, perhaps Joe Lieberman of Connecticut — to “throw” their vote on a pivotal filibuster vote.  Bottom line:  they are being asked to side with the ObamaCare supporters when it comes to the all important “cloture” vote — which is the real hurdle that ObamaCare supporters must overcome if they are to pass the bill in the Senate.

The cloture vote determines whether a filibuster will continue or not, and it requires the support of 60 Senators.  Siding with the ObamaCare supporters on the cloture vote would allow the “swing voters” to oppose the bill on final passage, where only 50 votes (plus the Vice-President) are needed.

Under this scenario, the moderate Democrats would then go back to their constituents and claim to have opposed the anti-gun health care bill because they voted against it on “final passage.” But the critical vote which will have determined the real outcome of ObamaCare will have been the cloture vote.  They will claim that the cloture vote was only a “procedural vote.”

It is hard to imagine that anyone with an IQ over 50 would think anyone would swallow this scumbag trick.