Republicans for Health Care Reform

Interesting piece on The Atlantic's web site about a string of Republican endorsements of health care reform. One pundit, the site notes, compares the push to Barack Obama's effort to trot out "retired" Republicans like Lincoln Chafee during the presidential campaign:

We've Seen This Obama Tactic Before and it Works, writes The Washington Post's Ezra Klein: "This is reminiscent of the strategy the Obama campaign employed in the closing weeks of the presidential election... The campaign began to roll out, or emphasize, retired Republicans: Colin Powell, Jim Leach, and Lincoln Chafee among them. Obama's advisers figured that if the current political situation was too polarized to permit bipartisanship, then they could reach backward, or maybe outward, to find Republicans who weren't subject to its pressures." Klein says the tactic helped with the election and can help with health care. That same strategy also helped Obama win support for the federal stimulus when he reached out to GOP governors, notes The New York Times' David Herszenhorn.