Snowe must Go

I've been thinking that I ought to write a blog entry about Maine's incumbent senator Olympia Snowe, and how it is time for her to be removed from the Senate. Per usual, Wisdom Weasel has done all of the heavy lifting on the issue, and his comments reflect much of what I would say on the matter.

For all of the moderate Democrats and Independents in Maine who don't like the direction that the Congress is heading, but who push-button Snowe's re-election because "she's a moderate," and "she does a good job representing the interests of Maine," there is one sentence in Weasel's post that is pertinent, if a bit underserved:

In reality all Snowe represents is a warm body helping to shore up the
Republican majority; to be patronized by the leadership on matters pertaining to
lobsters and lighthouses but otherwise just counted as another vote for the GOP.

Snowe is "helping to shore up the Republican majority." This means that the Republicans get to set the Senate agenda, get to have majorities on all the senate committees, and get to direct the debate on the Senate floor. A vote for Snowe helps to perpetuate the Republican agenda, no matter if she is a moderate legislator. And, as Weasel so convincingly points out, if Olympia Snowe was once a moderate, she is no more. The only time she breaks lockstep with the GOP agenda is when the the outcome is not in doubt. A token bone to her constituancy to enable her to wave the "moderate" flag.

My support will go to the Democratic challenger Jean Hay Bright, the journalist, organic farmer and former homesteader from Dixmont. Hay Bright wants to pull out of Iraq, supports single-payor health care (might as well join the rest of the industrialized world!), supports renewable energy investment, and wants to protect the environment, all values that I share.

Bill Slavick is the Independent in the race, and while I find his forthrightness to be quite enjoyable, there are a couple of areas where we aren't so well aligned, and I question whether he has the political chops to make a difference in Washington without a party backing him up (as opposed to Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders, who has been in the House for many years and who, in fact, has the endorsement of Vermont Democrats, who did not enter a candidate in the race.) Slavick's web site is worth a read.