by Hao Nhien Vu at Bolsavik.com

Voting on principle can be costly. U.S. Rep. Joseph Cao is hit with a backlash for being the lone GOP vote for the health care reform bill, even as the party’s leaders are denying they’re osctracizing him.

After the vote, a GOP colleague, minority whip Eric Cantor, refused to shake Cao’s hands, according to the Orlando Catholic Examiner.

Cao has also had two fundraisers canceled on him, and some contributors are demanding their money back, reports the AP.

Rep. Cao had always said that he supports universal health care access, but had a problem with abortion funding in the law’s previous version. Once abortion was taken out of the bill, he voted for it. After the vote, Cao told CNN’s Betty Nguyen that his vote was a “decision of conscience.” (See first video below the jump.)

Lobbying for Cao’s vote was intense, with President Obama and Cantor both vying for the man’s attention, reports The Hill in details here.

Cao later told the AP that he had asked the White House for help with rebuilding Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, but rejected the claim that there was horse trading: The White House did not promise anything, said Cao, and vice-versa, “I’m pretty sure that if I were to vote no against the bill the president would still continue to work with me to address the needs of my district.”

That, however, didn’t stop conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh from giving the only Vietnamese-American in Congress the moniker “Cash Cao” on his radio show.

Well aware that a backlash against Cao can cause a backlash-to-the-backlash, Republican leaders argue they are not taking revenge on Cao.

Cantor, the man who had refused to shake Cao’s hand, was in Cao’s hometown of New Orleans for a fundraiser for Rep. Bill Cassidy, whose district is somewhere else, in Baton Rouge. Cantor insisted that, “No,” retaliation is not planned. “Because I am well aware that Anh Cao is a thoughtful legislator. He weighed the pluses and minuses of the bill in his vote,” Cantor said.

Cao himself told CNN’s Don Lemmon (second video below) that his GOP colleagues have been “professional” about each other’s votes.

In California, Assemblyman Van Tran, a GOP stalwart who’s been a party faithful all his adult life, told Nguoi Viet Daily News (here, in Vietnamese) that he’d spoken to top party leaders and they “understood” Cao’s vote.

Tran declined to state whether he supports health care reform, dancing right around the question. Asked of Cao’s vote, Tran said, “we understand and respect (Rep. Cao’s) decision,” and said he hope Cao extracted from President Obama some “privileges and polices in the interest of his Louisiana district” for his vote.

Meanwhile, angry rank and file Republicans are still going after Cao. The above Wanted poster is from the Mad Conservative web site. The Freedom Post blog calls the anti-communist refugee legislator ”Joseph ‘Mao’.”