Reid's Bait and Switch

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had two problems. How would he get the healthcare bill out of the Senate Finance Committee without revealing the glaring potential fissures in his party over the public option on healthcare? And how could he lend a veneer of bipartisanship to a one-party bill?

He couldn't allow a vote on final passage out of the committee with a public option in the bill because he knew that he would lose Democrats and would have no GOP support. But real compromise was always out of the question. He wanted his public option. So he evolved a strategy where the only bill that would be voted on in committee would be one that did not have a public option, all the while planning for the final product to have one.

So he used the bait of a bill with no public option to hook moderate Democrats like Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and the gullible Republican Olympia Snowe (Maine).

SOURCE: Dick Morris