We learned on Tuesday that Republicans had agreed to move up the final vote on the healthcare bill from late tonight to early this morning. (And, of course, the vote has now been duly held, and the Senate has passed the bill, hallelujah, etc.)

Note that Republicans did not offer to move up last night’s cloture vote, just the final up-or-down vote on the Senate bill.

Far be it from me to impute any evil motives to the Republican Senate leadership. But, suppose, just for the sake of argument, that the following calculations happened to flit through the collective mind of the Republican Senate leadership on Tuesday:

If Sen. Robert Byrd drops dead or falls into a coma before Wednesday’s cloture vote, the healthcare bill will fall by the wayside.

But if Byrd remains alive and kicking (and waving his fist at them from the Senate floor and crying “Shame!”), and the cloture motion passes, that’s the ball game right there.

Byrd could drop dead after that, but the Senate bill would still pass on Thursday, since it requires just a majority vote.

And now suppose that Republicans didn’t particularly want to pointlessly hang around till late into the night on Thursday but did want to give God every chance to help them kill the bill, if He so chose to do. Funny, isn’t it, that what Republicans would then do is hold fast to Wednesday night’s time for the last cloture motion but move up the up-or-down vote?

So it’s lucky that we all know that the warm-and-fuzzy Senate Republicans would never do anything as coldbloodedly cynical as that.