The Left has been crying hypocrisy for weeks over Republican objections to the use of reconciliation to pass the health-care bill, and with some justice. Reconciliation has been used more often by Republicans than Democrats over the last 30 years. And reconciliation has been used to pass big health-care measures.

But the fact remains that the use of the procedure to pass elements of Obamacare would be unprecedented, as Michael Franc put it in NRO yesterday.

Why? Keep these facts in mind:

– Virtually all of the health-care measures passed via reconciliation had broad, bipartisan support.
– The votes that were tight and partisan were on clear, cut-and-dry tax-rate issues, and had to do with, you know, reconciling the budget.

The major counterexample the Left deploys against these facts is Medicare Part D, which passed with 54 ‘yes’ votes in a Republican-controlled Senate. Markos is perhaps the most guilty of this, including against yours truly on Twitter. Three things I would say to that:

1) Though the Republicans only had 54 votes, twelve Democrats (including one independent) voted ‘yes’ with the majority: Baucus, Breaux, Carper, Conrad, Dorgan, Feinstein, Jeffords, Landrieu, Lincoln, Miller, Nelson, and Wyden.

2) Medicare Part D hardly holds up as an exemplar of a good legislative process producing good legislation.

3) Most importantly, Medicare Part D wasn’t passed via reconciliation at all. Democrats could not or would not sustain a filibuster and cloture on the conference report was secured 70-29. Moreover, an attempt by then Senator Daschle to raise a point of order under the Congressional Budget Act — from which reconciliation rules stem — was overruled with 61 votes.

In fact, here is Sen. Pete Domenici (R., N.M.) during floor debate on Medicare Part D talking about the decision not to pursue the bill via reconciliation:

“Let me just tell you, without trying to take much time, that our distinguished leader had an opportunity to move this bill under what is called a reconciliation bill. Do you know what that would have done, Mr. President? That would have limited debate, and it would have made the bill almost not amendable and, indeed, besides that, there would be no points of order. He chose, as the bill progressed through, to do otherwise.”

Look, both sides can cherry-pick dates and numbers to suit their own purposes, but the fact remains that a $2.3 trillion dollar bill could pass both Houses of Congress without a single Republican vote, and after a legislative circus in the Senate that could see a new scale of parliamentary gimmickry and a direct intervention by Vice President Biden on issues that could make or break the bill (both possibilities I write about in more detail here.)

That is nothing short of unprecedented.

UPDATED at 4:41 P.M.