Death Tax Whip Count
I was a little sloppy with my earlier whip count on the Death Tax so let me put a finer point on it. There are probably 53 strong YES votes right now. That's 55 Republicans minus Lincoln Chafee, John McCain, Olympia Snowe, and George Voinovich, but includes Democrats Ben Nelson and Bill Nelson. You can bump that number up to 54 because McCain, who desperately wants to be liked by conservatives, has promised to vote for cloture, but not final repeal. After that, you have several fence sitters who have various reasons for not taking a solid position (they cite the deficit, they don't want to go against their conservative constituents, etc). They include: bq. Mark Pryor (D-AR) Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) Ron Wyden (D-OR) Max Baucus (D-MT) Evan Bayh (D-IN) Mary Landrieu (D-LA) Maria Cantwell (D-WA) Other Democrats who would do well by voting for permanent repeal include Barack Obama (D-IL) and Ken Salazar (D-CO).
