In a thoughtful and measured speech, Snowe said that her vote was a "YES" on the Baucus bill in order to move it out of the Finance Committee.
Her decision to vote for the bill was made even after the GOP essentially threatened to vote against her appointment to an upcoming senior post if she voted for the bill.
More, from the AP:
WASHINGTON – Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe voted for a Democratic health care bill, breaking with her party on President Barack Obama's top legislative priority...She told her colleagues: "When history calls, history calls..."
More, from HuffPost:
She cautioned that her vote should be seen as a sign of her faith in the process going forward and not as support for the final package that will arrive on the Senate floor.
"It doesn't forecast what my vote will be tomorrow," she said. Snowe's yes vote keeps her at the negotiating table and at the center of the health care reform debate.
Her vote, she said, comes amid knowledge that Democrats don't need Republicans to pass the landmark legislation.
And a good point from the Washington Post today:
"Not since Theodore Roosevelt proposed Universal Health Care during the 1912 presidential campaign has any such bill come this far."
P.S. If you're at all curious as to what the most nightmarish faction of the right wing fringe's reaction to this is, as always, just head on over to Breitbart's reporting of this and read the comments.
If you'd (understandably) rather not give Breitbart the traffic, the following is a sampling:
This ugly douchebag needs to do america a favor and DIE!!!!!!!
B!tch with a Capital "C"
She should be TARED(sic) AND FEATHERED...
RINO hag
Stay classy, Republicans.
Also, a word of caution about this vote, from the Kos's own mcjoan:
By voting yes, Snowe remains relevant--the Baucus bill passes with that shiny "bipartisan" sheen that seems still to matter to in Washington. But don't forget that she has her finger on the "trigger"--her trigger that would kill the public option. As BTD says, she's kept the Baucus bill alive, and through it the best chance of a making what now seems inevitable--reform of some kind--as watered down as possible.
The majority does have the votes to pass this without her, and she's basically threatening them to do just that, calculating that keeping her name attached to reform will be the goal for the negotiators. Those negotiators should actually take her up on that threat, and craft a bill that could pass without her. Their larger hurdle remains the House Progressive Block, which isn't backing down from it's insistence on real reform.