Update (9:27AM): Amazingly, Evan Bayh is buying into Mitch McConnell's framing.
Original post:
Mitch McConnell:
I think it is perfectly clear that most Americans will treat the vote to get on the bill as a vote on the substance of the bill. So our view is that cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill is a vote to endorse a half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts, $400 billion in new taxes, and higher insurance -- health insurance premiums for everyone else.
Mitch knows that while there probably aren't 60 votes in the Democratic caucus for health care reform, at the end of the day, despite yesterday's shrieking from Joementum, there also probably isn't a single vote in the Democratic caucus to actually join a Republican filibuster of the bill.
So -- because this is (as Jim DeMint said) their Waterloo -- Mitch McConnell wants to define a vote against a GOP filibuster as a vote for health care reform.
It's really an absurd argument. There's a huge difference between saying "I oppose this legislation" and "I don't think there should be an up or down vote on it."
If McConnell's argument had any merit, he'd have been justified in calling off last November's election based on the mere fact that Barack Obama seemed likely to win. Of course, McConnell had neither the power nor the justification to do that, and so long as no Democrats support the GOP's filibuster, it's the same situation today.
There is, by the way, a perfect recent example illustrating the inanity of Mitch McConnell's argument: The cloture and final roll call votes for 2003's prescription drug coverage bill.
70 senators voted for cloture on the prescription drug coverage bill, allowing it to proceed to an up or down vote -- but just 54 voted for the underlying bill.
That means there were 16 senators who said that while they opposed the legislation, they felt it should proceed to a vote. On that list of 16 senators were several Republicans, three of whom remain in Mitch McConnell's caucus today: Lindsey Graham, Judd Gregg, and John Ensign.
So if Mitch McConnell wants to persist in making this absurd argument that voting for cloture means you support the underlying bill, one need only look at the faces around him to know he's full of it. There's a difference between opposing a filibuster and supporting a piece of legislation, and Mitch McConnell knows it.