Would Olympia Snowe?s vote for a government-centered health-care reform make that reform bipartisan? Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman isn?t buying that argument:

Snowe may very well end up voting for whatever she and Democrats craft, but that won’t make the outcome bipartisan any more than dancing shoes made Tom DeLay Fred Astaire.

Nor would Snowe’s vote mollify the GOP grassroots: they don’t think of her as a Republican anyway. The notion that she is inspiring other Republicans to join the cause of reform falls apart when you see who is falling in line. A few prominent Republicans indeed said nice things about the Senate Finance Committee bill?the one on which Snowe was the only Republican vote. But that praise, from former GOP Senate lead-ers Bob Dole and Howard Baker and former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, loses its impact once you realize that all three of them work for major Washington law firms, whose clients include most of the big corporate players in the health-care industry. Theirs is rented bipartisanship, on retainer or billed by the hour.