The White House has just released the final text of the executive order which is the basis of the aforementioned agreement with the Stupak group.
Do they have the votes? With agreement, Stupak tells reporters, “We are well past 216, yes.”
David Frum tweets:
if HCR prevails, Republicans need an accountability moment. Jim DeMint/ Rush / Beck etc. [l]ed us to Waterloo all right . Ours.
Late Update: More from Frum:
We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?
Rep. Steve King (R-IA), on racial and gay slurs being hurled at Democratic congressmen: “I just don’t think it’s anything. … There are a lot of places in this country that I couldn’t walk through. I wouldn’t live to get to the other end of it.”
I mentioned a few days ago that what Republican senators are focused on in the Senate is using every procedural angle they can to keep the ‘Cornhusker Kickback’ and all the other most unpopular parts of the Senate bill in the bill. In other words, they’re going to make themselves the defenders of everything they’ve been hammering for months.
And something similar is going to happen in the House. The ‘fix’ bill includes getting rid of the ‘Cornhusker Kickback’ and all the other ‘special deal’ stuff in the original senate bill. And every House Republican is about to vote against it.
The President will speak to the cameras from the East Room of the White House tonight once the House vote is final.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) makes her way from the Canon House Office Building to the Capitol this afternoon carrying a ceremonial gavel, escorted by Reps. John Lewis (D-GA) and John Larson (D-CT):
A short video clip of her procession through the protests here.
Just a bit of background on what we’re likely to see tonight. With the Stupak deal in place, it seems close to certain that the bill will pass tonight, probably with a few votes to spare (though we’ll have to see if they let in Red district Dems vote no since they have votes to spare). The current GOP plan seems to be to try a series of procedural gambits this afternoon and this evening to force enough delays to push the final vote until late, late into the evening. And then politick on the basis of Dems passing the bill “in the middle of the night.”
Republicans now holding press conference concern-trolling Bart Stupak and company.
Bachmann: “This is the rule of law not the rule of man.”
Read our full report here.