Is Olympia Snowe Next?

[Captain_Carrot]

@smiling_bandit

Snowe is being exceedingly disingenous, because she’s trying (and has for a while) to ward off criticism of what we believe to be horrendously bad choices (read: supporting the current budget nightmare).

Negotiation is treachery! The only appropriate response is NO! To everything!

Seriously, are you even listening to yourself? There’s a reason that more Republicans represent Oklahoma than New York in the House. There’s a reason that Snowe and Collins are the only moderate Republicans left in the party. The Club for Growth and other chuckleheads keep insisting on purity, and as a result everybody who isn’t a conservative feels increasingly alienated by what is now the main wing of the Republican Party.

Also, it would help if any of your guys had ideas that hadn’t been tried and shown to be disastrous thirty years ago. “Cut taxes!” doesn’t cut it anymore.

[Dangerosa]

@Merijeek

But it’s become clear that the people who actually run the GOP are NOT the politicians. Those who actually do run it probably benefit when the GOP is in the shitter, to be honest. The farther it’s submerged, the better of they personally are.

-Joe

I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t a portion of the rank and file GOP that isn’t happiest when they are persecuted. I’ve met a lot of people like that in my life - women who are miserable unless their boyfriend is treating them like dirt, people who go find drama if they even sense contentment.

[smiling_bandit]

So, he wasn’t a real Republican? Is Snowe? Is Collins?

I don’t make any such judgement. Republican is a party label. He was a real Republican as long as he had the R after his name.

Who’s this we, by the way? Are you one of Snowe’s constituents, or are you one of those who believe that no True Republican could disagree with you?

Let’s simply say I’ma supporter of his primary challenger, for the reasons said challenger has stated on challenging Specter.

To others:

Cutting taxes has, franly, proven to be quite effective, and will continue to be so up to a point. It is no secret that tax receipts have tended to increase with tax cuts, and virtually every economic theory with any predictive value suggests that long-term tax receipts will increase with a lower tax rate (and therefore more investments over the long haul). Of course. I do not neccessarily say, however, that this has anything to do with the current mess. It’s not what is being considered here.

Second, negotiation is not something I have a problem with. Specter did not do this is any useful or effective way, and in fact rolled over like a trembling spaniel begging for a handout. The programs I object to are the very incarnation of fiscal imprudence, are poorly implemented, and rely on absurdly generous projections. You cannot get useful value by simply chucking money at pet political projects. I would like it if you could, but life does not follow our wishes.

Likewise, negotiation is only useful if you get something for it. Pelosi and Reid made it quite clear, thank you very much, that they were unwilling to offer anything. Therefore, negotiation was and is irrelevant.

Now, there will inevitably be many who object to my opinions on the grounds that previous administrations and Congresses, with greater Republican influence, also had nasty deficits and bad fiscal policy. I heartily agree, and this has been building for quite a while. This is largely why the Republicans lost: we are committed to taking over or breaking the Republicans as they are. Specter was the old guard. With people like him, Lott, and Stevens out of the picture, we have a much better future. Of course, we are looking several election cycles out if neccessary.

The strong will survive. The weak will burn.
However, once again, you are ignoring the actual situation. He was being challenged in the primary by a fellow politician who wanted more fiscal prudence. He then jumped ship in order to maintain his comitteeships and get paid off in political capital. That is hardly the same as him being hounded out of the party.

Of course, we could also…

Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean.

Because, hey, everyone likes Space Marines.

[Captain_Carrot]

@smiling_bandit

Cutting taxes has, franly, proven to be quite effective, and will continue to be so up to a point. It is no secret that tax receipts have tended to increase with tax cuts, and virtually every economic theory with any predictive value suggests that long-term tax receipts will increase with a lower tax rate (and therefore more investments over the long haul).

Hahahaha. Cite?

@smiling bandit

Likewise, negotiation is only useful if you get something for it. Pelosi and Reid made it quite clear, thank you very much, that they were unwilling to offer anything. Therefore, negotiation was and is irrelevant.

Wait, did you actually just say that Reid and Pelosi were unwilling to offer anything for negotiation? Are you blind, insane, or on a different planet?

[Frank]

@smiling_bandit

Cutting taxes has, franly, proven to be quite effective, and will continue to be so up to a point. It is no secret that tax receipts have tended to increase with tax cuts, and virtually every economic theory with any predictive value suggests that long-term tax receipts will increase with a lower tax rate (and therefore more investments over the long haul). Of course. I do not neccessarily say, however, that this has anything to do with the current mess. It’s not what is being considered here.

OK, I’ll bite. Where is your happy medium? (Leaving aside the fact that your assumption is unproved.)

It’s obvious that a 0% tax rate will not increase tax receipts. It’s equally obvious that a 90% rate on the top earners is unfair, no matter how much it may increase receipts. What do you believe is an appropriate tax rate that will cover our nation’s expenses?

[Marley23]

Snowe was re-elected by a huge margin in 2006, and so was Collins in 2008. There’s no motivation for them to change parties. I don’t see what they would gain out of it.

Not to copy Nate Silver, but he said recently that it doesn’t matter much if there are 58 Democrats or 62 or whatever - there’s enough of a spectrum there that power on things like cloture votes rests with moderates like Snowe and Specter and Collins and a few others. That’s the case regardless of their party affiliation.

[Captain_Carrot]

@Frank

It’s equally obvious that a 90% rate on the top earners is unfair, no matter how much it may increase receipts.

Eisenhower did it.

[Merijeek]

@Dangerosa

I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t a portion of the rank and file GOP that isn’t happiest when they are persecuted. I’ve met a lot of people like that in my life - women who are miserable unless their boyfriend is treating them like dirt, people who go find drama if they even sense contentment.

Sure sure. But the people who are actually directing the GOP get big syndication paychecks and book deals when the GOP is being beaten on by the mean mean (yet somehow totally pussy) liberals.

-Joe

[Frank]

@Marley23

Snowe was re-elected by a huge margin in 2006, and so was Collins in 2008. There’s no motivation for them to change parties. I don’t see what they would gain out of it.

Not being marginalized and demonized by the party they are a member of? I submit that, at this point, they would both be re-elected by Maine no matter what party they had after their name.

I also submit that when they retire, regardless of whether their successors have a D or an R after their name, they will not be Toomey-like, they will be Snowe-like and Collins-like.

This is not to say that I think they’ll change parties, though they might. A party which has members who happily state that the Presidential nominee of their party is not a real Republican has problems far beyond my ability to predict the repercussions of.

[Frank]

@Captain_Carrot

Eisenhower did it.

RINO. So was Nixon, so was Ford. For crying out loud, at the rate they’re moving along, pretty soon Reagan will be a RINO.

[DSeid]

Why would Snowe or Collins switch? They can pontificate on how the GOP has gone too far Right and vote how they feel like now. Neither gains anything from switching parties.

OTOH … they both have long careers ahead of them and at some point the GOP will move away from the far end space that are now left occupying - perhaps in 8 years, perhaps longer - but at some point the middle will get disgusted with the Democrats and when that happens a centrist Republican might go far. The chance of that for either of these two may be small within the GOP but it is tinier as Democrats. And few Senators do not look in the mirror and say “Hey, y’know, you’d make a good President!”

[Billdo]

Snowe’s op-ed was a shot across the bow of the Republican party. The way I read it was that she said: “You just lost Specter, and if you keep on with the same shenanigans, you’ll lose me, too, along with all the other moderates.”

Snowe is not going anywhere this week or month, but I think she’ll be watching over the next several months on where the party is going. If this current move toward shunning all but the ideologically pure accelerates, she’ll have a ‘D’ next to her name by the end of the year. If the party turns around, tones down its extremist language and reaches out to moderates, she’ll stay under the Republican tent.

What I think will happen is that the party won’t go so far as to force her out in 2009, but when the 2010 primaries get going, Republican moderates will get challenged by hard right ideologues, and the ramped up rhetoric will drive Snowe into the arms of the Democrats.

[Frostillicus]

It is no secret that tax receipts have tended to increase with tax cuts

I’m guessing you also believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy as well?

[Captain_Lance_Murdoch]

Snowe has little electoral motive to change parties. That said, she has to be looking around at the people she is caucusing with and say to herself “What the fuck am I doing here?” The vitriol being dumped on Specter probably doesn’t make her feel any better about team elephant.

[Caldazar]

@smiling_bandit

Cutting taxes has, franly, proven to be quite effective, and will continue to be so up to a point. It is no secret that tax receipts have tended to increase with tax cuts, and virtually every economic theory with any predictive value suggests that long-term tax receipts will increase with a lower tax rate (and therefore more investments over the long haul).

Apologies for the hijack, but I too would like a cite for this theoretical model as the real-world data does not support this hypothesis.

Annual US Federal Receipts

Annual Personal Income

Plotting some kind of effective tax rate against percent changes in annual receipts does not appear to result in a meaningful correlation.

[Voyager]

@Frank

RINO. So was Nixon, so was Ford. For crying out loud, at the rate they’re moving along, pretty soon Reagan will be a RINO.

Of course he was. He raised taxes as governor of California, and he saved Social Security.
The fiend!

[Gyrate]

@DSeid

Why would Snowe or Collins switch? They can pontificate on how the GOP has gone too far Right and vote how they feel like now. Neither gains anything from switching parties.

OTOH … they both have long careers ahead of them and at some point the GOP will move away from the far end space that are now left occupying - perhaps in 8 years, perhaps longer - but at some point the middle will get disgusted with the Democrats and when that happens a centrist Republican might go far. The chance of that for either of these two may be small within the GOP but it is tinier as Democrats. And few Senators do not look in the mirror and say “Hey, y’know, you’d make a good President!”

As I said elsewhere, I suspect Snowe is gambling that taking a stand now against the far-right wing of the GOP will stand her in good stead when the backlash hits. She and Collins are safe enough in their seats and will probably maintain more support locally by holding firm than by toeing the party line.

President Snowe? Who knows - but I could easily see a moderate Republican woman in the White House within twenty years if the party turns back from the brink.

[DSeid]

It’s not even a gamble. In 2006 she won with “74% of the votes … the second-largest margin (after Richard Lugar of Indiana, who didn’t have a Democratic opponent) of any U.S. Senate candidate in the country.” She doesn’t have a gamble in her next re-election, she has a gambol instead. Collins won her last election with a more modest 68% of the vote, still enough to feel zero threat from their Right, and nothing to gain from placing a D after her name.

[Jophiel]

@DSeid

Why would Snowe or Collins switch? They can pontificate on how the GOP has gone too far Right and vote how they feel like now. Neither gains anything from switching parties.

Well, being in the minority party is a lot less fun than being in the majority party. Look at how many retirements you see after a party shift in the House or Senate. It’s not likely (but who knows) that the Democrats will lose the Senate any time soon so spending the next 4-6+ years in the minority might not sound like good times.

She probably won’t switch but that’s one potential reason why they might.

[Dangerosa]

@Jophiel

Well, being in the minority party is a lot less fun than being in the majority party. Look at how many retirements you see after a party shift in the House or Senate. It’s not likely (but who knows) that the Democrats will lose the Senate any time soon so spending the next 4-6+ years in the minority might not sound like good times.

She probably won’t switch but that’s one potential reason why they might.

She also could switch to make a point. She’s been saying ‘big tent’ and if the GOP creates a pup tent and she is left standing outside in the rain saying ‘big tent’ she may leave just to say “hey, you guys have made a tent so small I don’t feel I belong or am welcome.” She may even do it out of a belief that it is what the GOP needs. She may do this - along with Collins - to try and convince the GOP that they are loosing moderates. If they are losing moderate Senators, what is happening out in the electorate.