Something worth noting here:  The Republican Caucus has an internal rule that no bill shall be called for passage unless at least half of the caucus is onboard with voting "yea."  So far, Senator Richardville has scrupulously stuck to that rule, even when it's worked against him, and is on the record that he will adhere to that practice even on this legislation.  That is going to complicate things for the Snyder-Calley ticket.

See, as of the butt-crack of dawn this morning, the entire Michigan Senate Republican leadership (with the exception Calley, Hansen, Hildenbrand, and Richardville) is on the record as being in Senator Schuitmaker's "vote nay" camp, the only question being a matter of degree.  To get this legislative malfeasance called for a vote with a seven-vote majority of the caucus leadership standing in opposition (Hildenbrand is still officially "on the fence" on this bill) is going to require some parliamentary sleight-of-hand worthy of Harry Houdini.

Also, as of this morning, only five republican senators (Hansen, Kahn, Kowall, Marleau, and Richardville) are known or believed to be on the "voting in support" side of the fence.  With 17 members of the caucus on the "voting in opposition" side of the fence, it's going to come down to where the four "on the fence" senators (Casperson, Emmons, Hildenbrand, and Jansen) will come down when the question is called . . . assuming that Calley and Snyder can compel Richardville to call the question without at least half-of-the-majority onboard.

Complicating the head count of the votes is the rather persistent rumor that two or three democrats have approached Senator Schuitmaker and offered themselves up as insurance "yeas" in exchange for procedural considerations going forward.  The reason that this is a problem is that no one who actually understands how whip counting works would dare suffer a question to be called for vote without knowing, in advance, within ±5%, how the final tally is expected to come down.  Applying this to the entire State Senate membership, 38 × 0.05 = 1.9 ≈ 2 "insurance votes" would be necessary one way or the other before either of the opposing leaders would allow a vote on final passage to be called.

That means that those four fence-sitters I mentioned are likely having their arms twisted into pretzels right now, and executive bribery pressure persuasion is being applied to any senators who are believed to be "leaning nay" on the question.

Also, I'm hearing that Richardville will either somehow force a floor vote on 2013-HB-4714, or else table the matter entirely until after the summer recess, sometime in the next two hours . . . because he has an overseas flight to catch this afternoon.

And I'm wondering if he's vacationing in a country with which we have an extradition treaty.