This time around, House leaders aren’t taking anything for granted.

Heading into Friday’s sequel to the historic Wall Street bailout vote, both Democratic and Republican House leaders were furiously counting votes, twisting arms, counting again and desperately trying to wrangle — and hold together — the necessary 218 votes on the Senate-amended bill.

With the world watching, the House can ill afford to fail a second time in passing legislation giving the Treasury Department some $700 billion to buy troubled debt from banks in the hopes of unfreezing the credit market.

That is why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters Thursday afternoon that she won’t bring the bill to the floor if leaders don’t have the votes to pass it.

The Senate amended and passed the original bailout plan overwhelming Wednesday evening, 74-25. And President Bush called more than three dozen House members Wednesday and Thursday.

The stock market closed down 348 points Thursday in a three-year low for the Dow Jones.

Democrats have been adamant that the onus is on the Republicans to deliver far more than the 65 votes they delivered on Monday, when the bill went down in a 205-228 ball of flames.

“It’s up to the GOP to do their part this time,” a Democratic leadership aide said.

In a sign of how tense the vote-counting might be, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Thursday admittedly backed down from a Wednesday assertion that the Republicans needed to deliver 100 votes for the bill to pass.

“On reflection, I have decided that the safer course and the more appropriate course is to say we need a significantly greater number of Republicans,” Hoyer said. “In other words, I don’t want to put an arbitrary number on it.”

But Democrats may have significant problems in their own backyard with a powerful bloc of fiscally conservative members of the Blue Dog Coalition who are fuming over the Senate’s inclusion of $149 billion in tax breaks that will go directly to the government’s books as deficit spending. Of the Blue Dogs’ 49 members, 23 voted for the bill Monday.

One possibility is that the bill’s Blue Dog supporters will still vote yes, but vote against the procedural rule needed to bring the bailout to the floor for a vote.

Rep. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.), a top Blue Dog leader, said he will oppose the rule Friday. He added that the topic of opposing the rule was widely discussed at a Blue Dog meeting Thursday, but no official Blue Dog position was taken, explaining, “You bet it came up.”

Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said that while most Blue Dogs intend to stay put on the bailout bill itself, “there are changes in nuance.” Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who voted for the rule on Monday but opposes the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch without offsets, said she will vote for the bill, but was leaning toward voting no on the rule.

If the Blue Dogs protest the Senate’s changes by voting against their party on procedural questions, they risk derailing the bill and the entire agreement that got the bill through the Senate.

Because of the Blue Dog threat to vote against the procedural measure, Hoyer is asking Republican leaders to round up votes to pass the rule. Those procedural votes usually fall along party lines, and Republicans generally vote against them as a bloc.

And if Democratic leaders can’t prevent the Blue Dog protest, they will have to find an equal or greater number of Republicans to vote for the Democratic rule. That was only adding to migraines that leaders on both sides were experiencing on Thursday.

Even though a number of Republicans — including Reps. Zach Wamp (Tenn.), Lee Terry (Neb.), John Shadegg (Ariz.), Jim Gerlach (Pa.), Tim Murphy (Pa.) and Patrick Tiberi (Ohio) — told national media outlets they might switch their “no” votes to yes, Republicans leaders were having a difficult time as of Thursday afternoon convincing a large swath of their members to support the bill, according to some sources.

And in between meetings with Hoyer, GOP Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) was calling members into his office by the truckload, supplementing a hard push by Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the White House.

“Everything we’re doing to reach out to members is predicated on the fact that failure is not an option,” said Blunt spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier.

But not all of those efforts were fruitful. Blunt’s visit to the meeting of the Republican Study Committee (RSC) was met with criticism that leadership was asking them to vote for a bill that members now considered “impure” because of alleged pork projects.