Giving up on the Presidency, GOP eyes the Senate in 2012

A disappointing loss for the Senate.

 

Too bad. I though Snowe was one of the most honest and smart thinkers in the senate.

 

she was, she is as guilty as all the republicans for the obstructionist stance of the last two years. i'll just ignore her complaints about partisan politics on her way out.

edit: she wasn't

 

Good. Another corporate senator down the drain. A true fake who played a phony bipartisan card. Maine can do much better.

 

Pretty bizarre to hear you say that considering that 1) the public option is near and dear to your heart and 2) she's probably, not counting the reactionaries and insane-o's in the GOP mainstream, one of the biggest reasons along with Senator Droopy (I-CT) that we don't have one.

 

"senator droopy" that's gold sam, that's gold

 

Wish it was mine, but I stole it from Jon Stewart

Spoiler

 

I didn't say she was perfect, Sam.

There isn't a rolleyes big enough...

 

There isn't? Why not? Why aren't you digging into the Greenwaldian reservoir of angst for Snowe?

Instead you're telling us she's smart (maybe..but) and honest (uhh....).

So if she's smart and honest as you said, then she knows how 1) stupid and 2) dishonest of her it is to not only reverse many of her past positions - not only to the point of not supporting/sponsoring/voting them any more, but actively obstructing them from even reaching a vote in the Senate. No vote for you Dream Act...Goodwin Liu...public option, etc because Olympia is smartly and honestly...actively blocking you from even reaching a vote on the floor?

Low bar alert gentleman, make sure you're wearing your Nike pumps at full capacity to jump over this one. Paging Dee Brown....

 

senator snowe introduces terrorist surveillance act

LOL at the wiretapping police

 

oh this is classic for rhad.

greenwald from an 06 blog criticizing snowe's "investigation" into wiretapping allegations

 

I refuse to believe it's rhadamantheus mourning the loss of Snowe, I think the ghost of horrible WaPo columnist David Broder has invaded is brain and are causing random fits of hysterical bipartisanity.

 

I think the Snowe moved along with her party. As the Republicans shifted to the right so did she. Her earlier voting record was more in line with the view that she was a centrist. But she too slowly moved to the right over the years and in many ways she doesn't represent the image that she claims.

I mean when Robert Bennett lost the Senate primary in Utah in 2010 to a tea partier, people were calling him moderate too. And that guy was an obvious conservative who got beat but a guy that was even more right wing.

There are no moderates left in the Republican party. I mean there are a couple here and there that might support abortion rights or support some gay rights but long gone are the days of minority parties forming coalitions with moderates of the majority party to get things passed. (and vice versa)

Moderates as a whole are a victim to the nationalization of politics. Back in the day state parties varied quite wildly so you'd have very conservative incarnations of the democratic party in the South and more liberal incarnations of the Republican party in the North. Party platforms were almost irrelevant since state parties controlled everything.

Today we have nationalized the process and as a result have created much more homogenized parties. The Democrats still have a fairly diverse makeup in terms of political orientation (Democratic governors in say Montana and Kentucky don't govern the same as governors in Massachusetts and Vermont) But the tea party movement finished off the last of the moderate Republicans and those that were left standing had to move to the right or become the next Robert Bennett. But even the Democrats have started to cannibalize their own in smaller races. Although as long as the Democratic primary electorate remains fairly diverse those efforts won't do that much.

So I suppose in the context of the Republican party they are more "moderate" but that's only because of the massive shift in the party. If they voted how they vote now 20 years ago, they'd be considered reliable conservatives (minus the abortion stance).

 

Even for you this is an odd and petty thing to pick on. I made a simple (and, to be frank, trite) statement, and you're extrapolating it into some sort of Snowe-worship.

It's just dumb.

 

Come on man, if you're going to take Obama to task for being too cynical, hypocritical etc on certain issues, you have to admit it's somewhat bizarre to hear you single out a faux moderate as smart and honest, particurly when she's been openly and explicitly dumb and dishonest on those exact same issues and was openly disrupting your desired outcomes.

This is one instance where glynch had it exactly right - good riddance to bad rubbish like Snowe, who get lionized by the insular Beltway pundit class (almost entirely working for or reading the Washington Post op/ed page that everybody else in the country ignores) as centrists when actually, instead of bold outliers, they're as cynical or worse than many extremists, and contribute to the corrosion when they know better and actually ahve the power to stop it. The worse part is you see the faux moderate perception trickling down into the rest of discourse resulting in posts like yours. That's actually what i'm objecting too more so than any inconsistency on your part. Snowe will not be missed; pretend Kingmakers (kingfakers?) like her and The Benator ultimately do as much harm as the most strident extremists.

 

Agreed on the faux moderate bit (which I never made any comments about) but I still think that compared to her peers she was at least trying to think independently. As for the Greenwald take, I'm sure I'd agree with it! I don't operate under some sort of all-good or all-bad dualism except in very extreme circumstances (Cheney comes to mind).

On the subject of public options and wiretapping, or corporate-pandering, or whatever the progressive or ethical cause du jour - virtually every congressperson is a dirty w****. Sometimes I can understand it, sometimes it looks to me like duplicity, sometimes I just think that particular elected official is a dangerous lunatic. There's nothing concrete about it. If you wanted me to amend my first post with "of course, she's still a terrible 'representative'" consider it done now - I would have thought such a statement damn near contextually inherent.

Anyhow, kudos to you for getting pgabriel to follow you around like the fat kid mingling at the end of the cool kids table at elementary school lunch hour. Always good for a chuckle.

 

...but then ditched it and went along with the herd anyway, knowingly choosing the wrong decision...after wasting everybody's time. That makes her even more culpable IMO, than straight up morons like Palin, et al.

 

You have to make clear what moderate means.

I think people have this idea that moderate are not only centrist in their political orientation but are also above the fray politically. In our minds moderates dont play the games of washington. In our minds moderates dont play the political shenanigans that go into say filabustering every nomination by President Obama or turning something as simple as the debt ceiling into a political game of Russian roulette.

She may have been moderate relative to the Republican party but as I said earlier she definitely shifted to the right and she most certainly played the partisan games that Republicans were putting out.

The mythical figure of the Washington moderate has been dead for sometime (particularly among Republicans) Lets not pretend she was anything different. She was your standard Republican senator that voted differently every now and then. She made it a point not to be a critical cross-over vote that would help the democrats and she was always under intense pressure to stick to the party line by the leadership. She wasn't a "maverick," she was your run of the mill senator with a little less crazy than some others.

I dont see how that warrants everyone slobbering all over her.

 

No argument, honestly.

In any case, this entire conversation is really excessive given how little I actually said.