Balance of Power

“Senator Collins believes that the administration would be best served if it did not rush health care reform,” Collins spokesman Kevin Kelley said after the meeting. “Clearly, this is a major challenge and it’s important that Congress work to get it right, otherwise the process will be divisive.”

Murkowski took a similar line in her own statement after the meeting: “We raised a number of issues, including how quickly the Senate is moving on a health bill that would raise taxes on small businesses, and modeling a new federal health plan on our broken Medicare system.”

Lisa Murkowski: Raised a number of issues. (Getty Images/AFP/Karen Bleier)

Of course, the mixed messages could just be Obama’s way of sending Republicans a message: Get on board now, because we can do this without you. And they can. They can also argue, with some justification, that many of the Republicans complaining about the bill now probably never had any intention of voting for it anyway.

But the talking points aren’t likely to help them with the handful of Republicans they could win over, such as Olympia J. Snowe of Maine. She wasn’t at the White House meeting today, but she’s supposed to meet with Obama on Thursday, and her reaction to the new argument was along the same lines. Medicare, she said, took more than a year and a half of work in Congress before Lyndon B. Johnson was able to sign it into law.

And, when told of Emanuel’s comments, she got a look of puzzlement and annoyance on her face. “What is going on?” she asked. The answer, most likely, is that the train is leaving the station — for better or for worse.