Anyone surprised by this needs their head examined:
Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine) is risking a shot at becoming the top Republican on an influential Senate committee by backing Democratic healthcare legislation, according to senators on the panel.
A Senate Democrat on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee said Republicans on the panel are threatening to vote against Snowe, who is in line for the senior GOP post that is about to come open.
“Wake up,” the Democrat told a reporter last week when questioned if the Republicans would retaliate against Snowe for crossing party lines.
As much as I bitch about the sheer chaos of the Democratic party from all the noisy voices (and it truly is maddening, as some days I hate Democrats more as a Democrat than I did as a Republican), it is far better than the alternative.
IndieTarheel
So, does Snowe care enough about said post to refuse to cross the line? Or will she refuse to cross the line anyway?
SpotWeld
When you build a political position based on how much you hate the “other guy”… and assuming that leads you to gain what ever poweful role you’re gunning for, don’t you invariably end up with a person who has tons of rhetoric but zero skill and/or initiative?
Punchy
At which time a savvy Dem (do they exist?) pulls a Arlen, Part 2 and offers her a cozy committee-ship if she jumps parties over to the Dem side. Force her to either face retaliation and scorn or praise and cheers (and a majority party inclusion).
matoko_chan
I think she will vote yes.
The GOP in its current instantiation is demographically doomed.
I think Snowe is positioning herself to lead a new party that will rise from the GOP’s ashes.
;)
Morbo
@matoko_chan: That or a Specterian heel-turn.
beltane
If Olympia Snowe pulled a Jeffords and became an independent who caucused with the Democrats, she would be rewarded with thousands of “We Love Olympia” and “Thank you, Olympia” bumperstickers sprouting on cars and trucks all across Maine.
She is not a Democrat, but there is no reason she has to remain a Republican either.
jcricket
What’s the upside for Snowe if she votes with Republicans? A couple more years in some cozy position in a dwindling minority?
She’s got a totally safe seat, as long as she stays “moderate”. She can vote her conscience with impunity. In fact, it’s probably better for her to do so, given her constituents.
But yes, let her vote with the Dems, and be shunned by Republicans, and encourage her to switch parties. Then run a primary campaign (See Sestak v. Specter) and push her to the left.
geg6
Why doesn’t she just go Specter?
I mean, seriously. There are long-time Democrats who are further to the right than either Specter or Snowe. Olympia Snowe will see love like she’s never seen if she’d do the smart thing.
But it’s Olympia Snowe. So I know better than to expect the smart thing.
Just Some Fuckhead
115 Republicans in the House and 21 Republicans in the Senate voted for socialism in the 1965 passage of Medicare.
Keep up the great work, Club for Growth.
MattF
There’s a bunch of conservative politicians who really believe that Glen Beck and Sarah Palin are the future of conservatism. Seems unlikely, but what do I know?
beltane
@matoko_chan: The sad thing is that Snowe actually represents an old party, the pragmatic, no-nonsense, keep your Jeebus out of politics, that exemplify the New England Republicans of generations past. Here in northern New England we have better knowledge than most of how the Canadian system works, and no one but the clinically insane is afraid of “socialized medicine”. Snowe has nothing to gain by killing reform, and if she does so, it will be against the wishes of her constituents.
Little Dreamer
@SpotWeld:
Great point, which can also be taken to a further conclusion:
Zifnab
Specter’s voting record has been very admirable over the last two years. He’s been slightly to the right of John Kerry on health care and environmental reforms.
And, honestly, who wants to be First Officer on the Titanic? Unless Snowe anticipates a complete reversal in the Senate sometime in the next 4 years, does she really want the Grassley slot? String along your Dem Senate friends for six months and watch all your legislation go down in flames. Hurray!
I just don’t see the appeal. At least Ben Nelson and Kent Conrad get a vote that matters.
matoko_chan
Look at this.
The smart demographic move would be to make a new party out of the independents and fight with the dems for the WECs in the old republican party.
Fleem
Anyone who hangs out in Portland or Lewiston will get a chance to cross paths with Senator Snowe. I see Susan Collins at events occasionally but Olympia Snowe seems to get out and mix with folks more.
I was flying down to DC from Portland a couple of months ago, and Senator Snowe was in line to board ahead of me. As she got on, the gate agent, a middle-aged guy with a thick Maine accent, greeted her as he probably does every week, and said, “You go pass that healthcare for us.”
Napoleon
@jcricket:
If she gets the chairmanship it helps with fund raising and by heading a committee it gives you the power to either directly through your committee or by logrolling help your district with legislation.
Her seat is not safe if suddenly she can not deliver for her state and her fund raising dries up, particularly since her state liens Democratic.
aimai
I’m with geg6 on this one. Everyone saw this coming *except* Snowe? That woman is dumb as a post. A humane woman, a thoughtful woman, would have switched to the Democratic party long ago. She’s not that woman. A woman of honor and of self respect would have switched over her treatment by her own party–she’s not that woman. A woman of integrity would vote for a bill *she helped draft*–she’s not that woman. A really stupid and pathetic excuse for a Senator would dangle compromise and bipartisanship in front of busy colleagues for several months while receiving overt and covert threats from her party and then back down in order to get voted “best girl” by a bunch of crazed obstructionists determined to see the entire country suffer rather than let the Dems do good policy. That’s the woman she is. She’ll back down, refuse to vote for her own bill, sulk for a while and then either accept the ranking membership thing as an olive branch or jump ship later out of sheer petty rage.
aimai
Legalize
If Snowe votes with the Dems on this issue, there is no remaining upside to her sticking with the GOPers, as either a politician from Maine or as a GOPer on the national stage. She will be dead to them because Rush will demand that it be so. I don’t see her going full Arlen, because she really IS a Republican at heart. She could very easily pull a Jeffords and caucus with the Dems in exchange for some sweet sweet committee action. What’s the point otherwise? Being a Republican in Maine means fuck all except for headaches.
Hugh
But isn’t there a special passion to hating Democrats as a Democrat? It’s the love, baby, that makes the hate so good.
Llelldorin
You can’t really be surprised that you hate Democrats more as a Democrat than you did before.
Republicans hate a sort of cartoon scapegoat version of the Democratic Party. Democrats have to deal with the real thing–not the wacky traitors who want to force your kids to bike to their own gay weddings, but the preening egotists who would fail to pass a bill guaranteeing universal peace, health care, and employment forever even if they had 85 seats in the Senate, because they’d get into a stupid squabble over what to name a post office in Sheboygan.
Fleem
Note also that Maine has some of the highest health insurance premiums in the country.
sv
So you’re implying that this doesn’t happen within the Democratic Party, or that if it didn’t happen, that would be a good thing rather than a lack of party discipline?
Or is it just because they’d use this discipline to keep Snowe from using her position to *actually* do something useful by passing some form of health care reform?
anonevent
@matoko_chan: I would be all for that if the party rose from the ashes of the Republican party. What your hinting at would be the splintering of the Democrats before the Republicans die. Do this in 2014 when Obama is on his second term and the Republican party has died a horrible death and it sounds like a plan.
Ash Can
Hats off to that Democratic senator for giving that reporter a verbal rap in the mouth for asking an idiotic question.
Napoleon
OT but Orly Taitz just got wacked with a $20K fine this morning by that court in GA. She is going to have to fill a lot of teeth/write a lot of wills/sell a lot of real estate to pay that one.
Erika Froh
Any hints that she might jump ship and pull a Jeffords?
Fleem
@aimai:
If Senator Snowe were as dumb as post she’d be Susan Collins.
asiangrrlMN
@Llelldorin: Love your post. It’s so true, sadly.
Come on, Olympia, jump ship. The water is mighty fine over here in Dem land. Or, as Beltane says, go Indy. No reason to stay with the regional party that is the GOP.
Napolean, woo-hoo! That’s good news for John McC–oh, wait. It’s good news for ME! Ha! Take that Orly Taintz.
matoko_chan
amai, i think ur wrong….wanna bet?
i think she is going to vote yes.
ed
Snow has an opportunity to make a Real Difference and be on the Correct Side of History. I wonder what decision she’ll make…
Original Lee
Snowe is more likely to go Independent than Democrat, unless the Dems pony up something equal to what she could get by staying with the GOP. But Maine politics is a closed book to me, so I could be all wrong about this.
Tangentially related but still OT:this post at Crooks and Liars is worth a read, unless you haven’t taken your blood pressure meds yet.
Minionero
Hold on everyone.
Senator Snowe must not switch parties!
If she does, she’ll be a Democrat (or, I suppose, an independent), and therefore, we won’t care about her vote!
We need to have a Republican voting for this bill! Even if there’s already 60 Democrats voting for it! We must water down the legislation sufficiently to persuade at least one Republican to vote for it!
If Snowe bolts the GOP, we’ll then need to rewrite the whole bill to satisfy Susan Collins or some such!
/Baucus-Reid mentality
Fleem
@Original Lee:
Will I be the first to say “Michael Moore is fat”?
slag
Awww…we love you too, John.
Nick
“it is far better than the alternative”
Disagreed. The Democrats’ failure to enforce partisan priorities with chairmanships – the pure-seniority system that puts corrupt assholes like Baucus and Rangel in charge of committees – is the biggest reason why the Democratic caucus is so ineffectual. Or if not the biggest reason, then at least the starkest and simplest to fix. There’s very little to admire about the GOP but their ability to whip their members is impressive if nothing else, and that stems at least as much from their institutional structure as it does from conservative cultism.
Bulworth
A nay vote in exchange for assuming the ranking position on the Senate Commerce Committee? Doesn’t sound like an incredible motivator to me. Then again, I’m not a Senator from Maine.
LD50
Jesus Christ, Snowe should just switch parties. She’d still win re-election.
Brachiator
@aimai:
But its not just the party. I don’t know Maine politics. Would the people who voted for her accept her jumping parties?
Seth
Also disagree about the Republican system being worse in this sense. If the Democratic Party wanted to actually get good policy passed, they’d create some incentives for the Ben Nelsons and Max Baucuses of the world to actually do the right thing, instead of leaving them able to focus exclusively on where their fundraising for the next election cycle will come from. Without some party discipline, you’re left with something like, well, the astonishingly impotent Democratic supermajority that we currently have.
LD50
@Brachiator: The state dependably votes for Democratic presidents every 4 years, and it’s New England, not the South. Any losses she’d incur would easily be made up for by new Dems.
Redshirt
I’m from Maine (live in MA however), so I know something about Maine politics. It was said earlier: The Republican party in Maine is mostly the old time kind, not the new Southern Fired Neocon flavor. That said, Obama is hugely popular in Maine, as is health care reform.
I am deeply interested in this fundamental question: Does Snow (and Collins for that matter) go against the interest of their people in favor of party-line politics (and that’s all it is).
I have no idea which way either of them will fall.
Minionero
@Redshirt:
Is there anything Snowe or Collins can do to get themselves rejected by the Maine electorate?
I mean, if Obama is popular there, and health care reform is popular there, and both senators vote against Obama’s signature domestic issue – health care reform – shouldn’t there be some sore of electoral backlash?
Or are they just in “live girl/dead boy” (gender-corrected cliche!) territory, facing no pressure whatsoever to reflect their constituents’ will?
aimai
Matoko-Chan,
I won’t bet on Snowe’s vote one way or another because I’m fundamentally uninterested in her political calculations. She’s been wrong on everything she’s ever discussed in public. She was instrumental in underbudgeting the stimulus. Whichever way she votes on this disaster of a Baucus Bill she can’t rehabilitate her centrist/moderate cred with me because she doesn’t have any. At this point, absent her switching party’s publicly and coming out for national single payer health care, she can never have the slightest interest for me as a political figure. She’s a trimmer and she belongs to a party that has done immesurable harm to this country, and all on the backs of her long suffering constituents.
aimai
Redshirt
@Minionero: There’s not much. Also as mentioned above, the pair’s popularity is local. They do work in their local areas and are quite out and about. That makes them very popular.
Sad to say, I don’t think they’d face a reckoning if they voted against health care reform. They’re too well entrenched, too well liked. It would take a special pol to take them on — it could be done, but just not likely.
If it were up to me, I would try and tie them to the worst of the Souther fried Repuglicanism — once you get voters in Maine equating Snowe with Corywnn or Vitter, they might re-think their voting patterns. B
Deb T
Me too. I hate Democrats more and more each year, but I despise the Republicans and think they are hateful and ridiculous for all this foolish behavior since Obama was elected.
I’m sick of them all. I think reading blogs makes it worse for me because I read so much good sense, and get the real story online. That reality gap plays havoc with my temperament.
Dag nab it!
geg6
@aimai:
You and I are channeling one another today.
What aimai said.
matoko_chan
Amai-san
While it is possible that the GOP has done great harm….i think i can argue that the system is WAI (working as intended).
The Founders built for system robustness, not flexibility.
That is why change is so hard to effect.
The genius of the Founders was that they built so that representation was as fairly distributed as they could design for.
The american people tend to elect the president best suited for that particular slice of spacetime….like Andy Jackson was a sumbitch, but I doubt the Union would have survived without him.
GW was elected by a meager 5 ec votes and lost the popular by 500k.
He would have been a perfectly adequate president to shepherd the declining white protestant republicans into the demographic sunset.
But 911 intervened.
He simply wasn’t up to task to deal with a singleton catastrophic event like that.
Lack of substrate.
Redshirt
TPM is reporting Snowe will vote for the Baucus Bill to go out of Committee. I assume this is good, but I can’t really tell anymore. Nor care. Just don’t be hatin’ on us Mainers!
geg6
@Redshirt:
Yup. Here we go:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2009/10/no-indication-of-sen-snowe-vote-on-health-care-yet.html
matoko_chan
Do i win?
even tho amai-san wouldn’t take the bet?
aimai
No Matoko_chan,
You can’t win a bet no one would take. There wasn’t any race that Olympia Snowe’s vote affected. It was all smoke and mirrors. She herself says that her vote for the Baucus Bill (a bad bill) does not influence her later vote for any later Bill. Only someone without actual principles votes, or doesn’t vote, on signature legislation this carelessly and calculatedly.
aimai
geg6
@matoko_chan:
That’s only voting to get it out of committee. Doesn’t mean she votes for it on the floor. Though the chances of that just went up, admittedly.
matoko_chan
well….ima gamer.
I’ll take those odds.
;)
Lou D. Jones
Anybody who thinks that has not spent much time in the state of Maine. Olympia Snowe is a goddess here who won with nearly 75% of the vote last time. Unless she is caught naked on a street corner selling meth to five-year-olds, that is her seat for as long as she wants it, no matter what this healthcare vote. The assumption regarding Olympia is that, while you may not agree with her, she votes what she believes is right. One healthcare vote wouldn’t change many people’s minds up here.
Redshirt
Don’t forget: The tallest snowman in the world is actually a woman, and that woman is Olympia Snowewoman….
Lou D. Jones
I am no fan of Olympia Snowe, but honest to God, I don’t know why she puts up with this abuse from these looney right wing Deliverance clones. No matter what a twit I thnk she is, she is a far better human being than Jim DeMint or Tom Coburn.
Redshirt
I don’t get it either Lou, but I’m hoping this is the beginning of the end. One can anticipate that Snowe will now be the focus of Teabagger rage, and those committee threats stated earlier might come to pass.
I’m hoping the Wingnuts will push her right out of the party over this one vote. Not out of the question!
Fleem
@Redshirt: @Lou D. Jones:
You guys are talking about this: Snow Woman
Here’s the local scoop: Press Herald
SiubhanDuinne
Well, it passed committee 14-9, with Snowe’s help.
Fleem
@geg6:
Actually, she’s said she’s voting for the whole thing.
Midnight Marauder
@Fleem:
Dubious. Snowe has made it quite clear that her vote today is by no means an indication of further support for HCR.
From TPM:
geg6
@Fleem:
I don’t think that’s correct. I’m pretty sure I just read on HuffPo or TPM that she said she has not committed to how she’ll vote once the final bill reaches the floor.
matoko_chan
amai-san
shall we play a game?
I bet Snowe votes for the bill.
;)
Redshirt
IF Snowe votes for the actual bill, it will be a huge turn around for her, given her repeated claims to be against the Public Option, and the PO better be in the final version of this bill. It would also be the end of her Republicanism.
So, sadly, I’ll have to bet no, Snowe will not vote for the actual version of the reform.
Minionero
How principled!
That should have been John Kerry’s mantra in 2004!
Lou D. Jones
No, it isn’t, and another benefit for her is that it would royally screw with Susan Collins, whom she is known to detest.
Lou D. Jones
You know, I am going to disagree with that. As long as the bill looks *something* like the one she voted for today-and as long as the White House throws her some bones-I think she will vote for it.
Like she said, she wants to be a part of “history.”
Redshirt
I’m hoping she votes for the bill, that’s for sure. But I’m more hopeful that the final bill has a definite Public Option in it; Snowe said she won’t go for that. Sooooooo…. either she’s seen the light, or will stick by her previous words. I tend to think she’ll stick to her word, but I’d like to be wrong on this one.
Lou D. Jones
Yes, but she said that as a Republican. Things may change that way.
Redshirt
Oh hey now, Christmas is still months away. That would be too sweet a gift.
I like Collins better, only because I had to work with her office a couple of times and found it to be a great experience. You got any dirt on Snowe v. Collins?
Chris R
Olympia Snowe has put the American people ahead of the Republican party today and I congratulate her for that.
Fleem
@geg6:
Heh. Score -1 on me for believing the local paper, which is guaranteed to have at least a couple of the facts. Just not all of them.