Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) said on MSNBC this afternoon that she has not been threatened with punishment by her party for voting with Democrats to pass the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform bill.
“No, they have never indicated that to me,” she told Chris Matthews. “And I’ve had very constructive and positive conversations with Leader McConnell and others. I’ve never been threatened. I obviously know that they would have preferred that I voted otherwise. But I have no reason to believe the rumors that have been prevailing with respect to that. I obviously have to focus on what’s right.”
Matthews then suggested that she might be honored with a Profiles in Courage award from “the Kennedy organization up at Harvard.”
Besides that comment about potential punishment from her party, Snowe didn’t make much news in back-to-back interviews on CNN and MSNBC. The public option is still essentially a deal breaker for her — “I would find that very difficult to support” — and “it’s hard to say” whether any other GOP senators might support health care reform on the Senate floor.
