Nothing you don’t know about Olympia Snowe
It is hard not to be squemish on the Democratic attempts to convince Olympia Snowe to switch parties. Sure, she is now by default the least conservative Republican, but her Republican credentials are pretty darned set. I’m getting weary of Human Events compiling a list of the ten least Conservative Republicans in a modus operatus to bend everyone down to Jim Demint.
To recap, here’s Maine’s Republican Party, the people most likely to be voting in a Republican Party primary:
The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, demands an investigation of “collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth,” suggests the adoption of “Austrian Economics,” declares that “‘Freedom of Religion’ does not mean ‘freedom from religion'” (which I guess makes atheism illegal), insists that “healthcare is not a right,” calls for the abrogation of the “UN Treaty on Rights of the Child” and the “Law Of The Sea Treaty” and declares that we must resist “efforts to create a one world government.”
It also contains favorable mentions of both the Tea Party and Ron Paul. You can read the whole thing here.
Dan Billings, who has served as an attorney for the Maine GOP, called the new platform “wack job pablum” and “nutcase stuff.”
Never mind she enjoys some of the highest approval to disapproval ratings of anyone up for re-election in 2012.
The one thing she has to realize is that the die is cast. She has alienated her energized right wing Republican flank, and can do nothing to “build bridges” to them. I believe Olympia Snowe should run for re-election, and if she loses the nomination, call it a Senate career. She’s been there for 18 years, and while this doesn’t have the same pitifulness as Arlen Specter hanging on after many more years, I do have to wonder if maybe the Congress could use a bit more turn-over… is it everyone’s mission to match Robert Byrd’s terms of service?
Surely Snowe would beat the new Republican governor as an “Independent”.
Understand, Snowe and her co-hort Collins joined their party caucus on, most recently, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. In the sense that this stops a Democratic President from getting an accomplishment, and in the sense that the group that successfully challenged the thing in Court was the Log Cabin Republicans — I guess it successfully scrambles that electorate.
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A note about Richard Lugar — six terms out — currently in Kenya actually doing some stuff, which is anathema to his “Tea Party” Republican base…
Just saying in the case Republicans weigh the same “inevitable winner” option they have with Orrin Hatch in Utah: You know, Obama carried Indiana in 2008? (The 2010 electorate was evenly split with Obama and McCain voters.)