In case you missed it yesterday, my colleague Jonathan Chait's latest TRB discerns a transformation taking place:
The health care debate has been presented as a conflict between spendthrift Democrats and skinflint Republicans. The reality is closer to the opposite. Conservatives may make up the strongest opponents of new government spending (to cover the uninsured), but they also make up the strongest opponents of cutting existing spending. Health care has become the new defense spending--a category of public outlay that the right has trained itself to defend in even the most wasteful iterations.
The whole column is worth reading. And, sadly, what he says about the Republicans applies to at least some (though definitely not all) more conservative Democrats.
--Jonathan Cohn