On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh said that none other than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told him that the Republicans are offering amendments to the health care bill, not to improve the bill, but as a parliamentary maneuver to “flush out” Democratic centrists Ben Nelson and Jim Webb, and to try to peel them away and thus stop the bill:
“Plus there are the Republicans using procedures, parliamentary procedures, and offering all these amendments. Now the purpose — I talked to Sen. McConnell about the purpose of the amendments. He said we’re trying to flush out with these amendments, just who it is that really we have to focus on here. And the two names that he mentioned were Ben Nelson and Jim Webb in Virginia. Because there’s something that Webb is not going along with the Democrats on, I forget specifically what it is. My point in mentioning all this is, that the Republicans in the Senate are using parliamentary procedures, they are offering all these amendments, not to make the bill better, but to flush out and to find out who it is that they really need to work with to stop this. That is their objective, to stop it.
When contacted by TPM, McConnell’s office could not immediately comment.
