GOP senator: Half our opposition to healthcare just plain politics from Raw Story Breaking News

Half the Republicans' opposition to a public health care option comes not from policy differences with the Democrats, or fundamental philosophical differences about the role of government, but purely from a desire to score political points against President Barack Obama, a senior Republican senator has admitted.

George Voinovich (R-OH) said on CNBC Wednesday that a desire to prevent the Democratic president from scoring a historical victory with a public health plan accounts for at least 50 percent of the GOP opposition to the plan.

Squawk Box host Carl Quintanilla asked the senator: "How much of this disagreement with the administration is about the policy of health care and how to fix it, and how much of it is Republicans' ... desire to declaw the president politically?"

To which Voinovich responded: "I think it's probably 50-50."

But Voinovich quickly added that there are many Republicans who are willing to work on a bi-partisan compromise on health care and other entitlement reforms.

"I'll tell you this, we have enough Republicans in the United States Senate who want to work with this president on a bi-partisan basis that will try to come up with something that won't kill our economy and make sure that we start to do a better job with the money that's being provided for health care," Voinovich said.

Voinovich's admission plays well into the hands of the Obama administration, which has seized upon a comment made Monday by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) that health care could be Obama's "Waterloo." The administration has launched a grassroots campaign using DeMint's words as proof that there are no principles or ideas behind the GOP's opposition to public health care.

-- Daniel Tencer