This is significant:

Senate Democrats have abandoned plans to use a fast-track parliamentary strategy to avert a threatened Republican filibuster and pass a health care overhaul — a signal that they are considering major policy concessions to moderates.

The most significant of these could be restructuring or dropping altogether a proposed

government-run insurance plan — the so-called public option — that many liberals consider a necessary part of the overhaul.

One possible fallback is a proposal by Thomas R. Carper, D-Del., to create a government-sanctioned insurance plan that would be available only in states deemed to lack affordable private insurance plans. Under Carper’s plan, the insurance plan would be structured as a private nonprofit entity, run by a board appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate…

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Congratulations RedState readers.

We have supported a small business, made a statement, and attracted the attention of the Wall Street Journal.

Since last Wednesday morning, Ron’s Home & Hardware has received roughly 240 orders for five-pound bags of rock salt. While buyers were scattered around the country, each requested the same delivery address in Portland, Maine – one of six state offices for U.S. Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe.

John M. Thieling, co-founder of the Indianapolis-based company, says an employee turned to the Web for an explanation and found a blog entry on RedState.com urging readers to order bags of rock salt from Amazon.com and mail them to the senator’s office. Ron’s Home & Hardware sells rock salt through Amazon.

Very well done!

Olympia Snowe has sold out the country. Having been banished to our world after Aslan chased her out of Narnia, Snowe is intent on corrupting this place too.

So we should melt her.

What melts snow? Rock salt.

I’m going to ship this 5 pound bag of rock salt to her office in Maine. It’s only $3.00. You should join me.

It is a visible demonstration of our contempt for her. First she votes for the stimulus. Now this.

It’s time to melt Snowe. ORDER YOUR BAG HERE.

The mailing address is:

3 Canal Plaza
Suite 601
Portland, ME 04101
Main: (207) 874-0883

Senator Olympia Snowe is the Democrat’s one great hope for “bi-partisan” healthcare. Of course, by that Democrats mean that Snowe is the only one that will give them any cover at all that what they are considering could possibly appeal across party lines. But, even Snowe is saying that the healthcare train needs to be slowed down despite Obama’s cries for full speed ahead.

Snowe has recently begun to say that a vote on the bill before the August recess, as Obama keeps pushing for, is way too soon and that the Senate needs to slow down considerably.

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I’m here at CPAC, where I’ve had the opportunity to meet briefly with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell to talk over current issues. After a strong speech (which you might ultimately be able to find here), McConnell addressed questions from several bloggers.

To me, the most notable answer from McConnell came in response to a question from Fausta - when she asked his thoughts on Michael Steele’s suggestion that the RNC might not support the re-election of Senators Snowe, Collins and Specter, given their votes for the Obama-Reid-Pelosi Debt Spending Plan. McConnell first threw cold water on the idea - saying that he would support the re-election of his Senate GOP colleagues. Then he predicted that Arlen Specter would be a more dependable vote in the future, saying:

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What do Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe have in common? Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe are, together, the reason we will be, come Monday (or Friday, if President Obama departs entirely from character and keeps his word for once), $787,000,000,000.00 further in debt, with nothing but ultra-funded pet pork projects in heavily Democratic districts to show for it.

Bravo, Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe. Bravissimo, in fact. The entire House GOP stood united not once, but twice, in opposition to this unread, unstimulative, wasteful excuse for a “stimulus” package. They did it despite potential political fallout in their own districts, even though they — unlike their Senate counterparts — have to run for reelection every two years (thereby giving them far less time to paper over irresponsible votes and actions).

The Senate GOP did the same — twice — with three notable exceptions: Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe. The three Republican senators, the former from Pennsylvania and the latter two from Maine, provided the votes necessary to get the initial pork-filled debt/spending bill out of the Senate and into conference, and then, when the Senate Democrats could only muster 57 votes in favor of the final version of this monstrosity (a feat which required Obama to send a private jet to Ohio to fetch Sherrod Brown (D) from his mother’s funeral to cast a late-night ballot in favor), Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe chipped in the final three votes necessary to pass a borrow-and-spend bill the size of the 15th largest economy on the planet.

The Democrats wrote this bill, and they unanimously passed it in the Senate (in the House it faced featured bipartisan opposition). Rather than allowing those responsible for its contents to own the results, though, Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe were faced with the irrepressible need to chip in to the effort, casting the necessary votes to pass a bill they have not read and which will accomplish none of its stated aims.

Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe. Three Republicans whose desire to put their constituents and countrymen further into debt for no apparent reason clearly supersedes their duty to even read that legislation they are casting the deciding votes on.

Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe. Three Benedict Arnolds of the modern Republican party whom we can do without, thank you very much.

CNN’s Political Ticker reports that with Ted Kennedy apparently unavailable for a Senate vote tomorrow, Harry Reid is trying to line up one more Republican to vote for the Democrat spending bill. The concern is that without Kennedy, the bill has only the minimum number of votes required to pass: 60. And the three GOP supporters had made clear that their support was conditional on there being 61 votes — so none could be described as the decisive vote that passed the package.

According to Roll Call (subscription required), Reid has a backup plan in case he can’t get another Republican:

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Arlen, Olympia, and Susan sold out America and voted for the stimulus.

Arlen Specter went on Sean Hannity’s show and said John McCain was wrong. The stimulus, according to Arlen, is $780 billion, not the $827 billion McCain said.

Collins said

she could not support a bill as large as the $819.5 billion package passed by the House last week.

“We don’t want a package that is too small because that will end up just wasting money. On the other hand, we’re very leery of having an enormous package that would not be necessary and would just boost the federal deficit,” Collins told CNN as Nelson nodded in agreement.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, in a statement released as the voting was happening in the Senate, the total bill costs $838.2 billion.

So Specter, Collins, and Snowe all voted for a bill that is larger than any one of them claimed it was or wanted.

Will they vote for the final version then? Bigger question: will they vote before the CBO releases an estimate on the conference version?

Multiple sources are reporting that Republican Senators Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins have reached an agreement with Democrats on a final $780 billion version of the so-called “stimulus” package.

Way to sell out your team, folks.

Update by Jeff: According to the AP, Democrats expect this “bipartisan” agreement to be little more than a formality necessary to get the bill through the Senate and into conference, where they plan to restore the $140B decrease negotiated by Benedict ArnoldArlen Specter, Benedict ArnoldSusan Collins, and Benedict ArnoldOlympia Snowe.

I hope you enjoy the short-lived feather in your cap this compromise will be, Senators. All you’ve done is pave the way for this bill to get far enough along in the process to have everything you negotiated out put right back in — and at that point there’ll be nothing you can do to stop it.

Again, well done.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) just said in a radio interview that only two “Republican” Senators are still actively attempting to provide the Democrats “bipartisan” cover for their nearly $1,000,000,000,000.00 borrow-and-spend bill. Based on what I’ve been hearing from around the Hill, and Roll Call’s report that Sen. Collins (R-ME) was having misgivings about betraying her party and constituents, those two are (definitely) Arlen Specter (PA) and (most likely) Olympia Snowe (ME).

In the radio interview, Burr said nobody knows if the vote, initially planned for 7pm, will actually happen tonight (translation: despite his typically hotheaded rhetoric, Harry Reid lacks the votes to give himself “bipartisan” cover and therefore to make this bill’s passage politically worthwhile), and that ” out of every 10 calls coming in about the [so-called] stimulus, 9.9 of them are against the bill.”

Keep calling Senators Specter, Snowe, and Collins at 202-224-3121. Tell them that if this trillion dollar borrow-and-spend-on-pork plan is going to pass, it needs to do so as a Democrat-only measure.

The Democrats campaigned on a platform of unadulterated liberalism, which they pledged to implement if they gained enough seats in both houses to do so. They have the votes to pass this and other policies that are doomed to fail once implemented; the Republicans’ job is simply to propose principled alternatives, and to make Democrats own their own proposals on a party-line basis.

Call Senators Specter, Snowe, and Collins at 202-224-3121. Tell them not to help the Democrats drag this country’s economy into the gutter.