An end run around the filibuster for public option?

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - According to the Washington Examiner, Harry Reid has not stopped rummaging around in his bag of tricks for the public option. Despite plummeting approval ratings in his home state, Reid wants to push the more radical agenda, but in a way that keeps Republicans from effectively blocking it:

Senate Democrats desperate to find a way to pass a health care bill that includes a federal insurance plan may have come up with a way to do it without putting moderate members who oppose it in political jeopardy.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is weighing a plan to bring the final health care bill to the floor without a public option — making it much easier to get the 60 votes needed to prevent a Republican filibuster — and then adding the provision later as an amendment.

The public option amendment would be there waiting, but the 60-vote test would technically be on a bill without the government plan. Then moderate Democrats could drop out for the vote on the public option, which requires just 51 votes for passage.

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