Key Obama advisers indicate openness to pushing health care reform through with just Democratic votes.

Bloomberg’s Ed Chen reports that two of Obama’s top advisers — Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod – “may rely only on Democrats to push health-care legislation through the U.S. Congress if Republican resistance doesn’t eventually give way.” For months, the White House has underscored its interest in achieving bipartisan health care reform. But as conservatives remained wedded to an obstructionist agenda, the White House is now conceding that it may have to rely on Democratic votes to pass reform:

“Ultimately, this is not about a process, it’s about results,” David Axelrod, Obama’s senior political strategist, said during an interview yesterday in his White House office. “If we’re going to get this thing done, obviously time is a- wasting.” […]

“We’d like to do it with the votes of members of both parties,” Axelrod said. “But the worst result would be to not get health-care reform done.” […]

“That’s a test of bipartisanship — whether you took ideas from both parties,” Emanuel said. “At the end of the day, the test isn’t whether they voted for it,” he said, referring to Republicans. “The test is whether the final product represented some of their ideas. And I think it will.”

As former Gov. Howard Dean has been arguing, “If Republicans want to shill for insurance companies, then we should do it with 51 votes.” In the interview, Emanuel left the door open to using reconciliation “as an alternative vehicle.”