This should surprise no one but Olympia Snowe:
I have direct knowledge of a conservative in Maine who is preparing to challenge Olympia Snowe. He has told me he is running but has asked me to keep things vague so as not to step on his announcement, which he plans to make early next year. He comes out of the tea-party movement and I have every reason to believe he’s serious about this.
As for Snowe, she had better be looking over her right shoulder. Last month, Public Policy Polling found that 63 percent of Maine Republicans would support “a more conservative alternative” to Snowe, while only 29 percent were committed to her.
This is why I just laughed the other day with the reports about Manchin switching to Republican. As a conservadem, he can hold Republicans and Democrats hostage for his vote. As a moderate or liberal Republican, he would be rewarded by being thrown out on his ass by a teahadist in the 2012 primary. The only question that remains is does Snowe become an Independent or Democrat before or after they throw her out of the party.
dr. bloor
The Corner really thinks Snowe getting a conservative challenger is some big, hush-hush news? The field is going to look like the start of the NYC Marathon.
What a bunch of nitwits.
El Cid
Well, Snowe had better learn the new definitions of “moderate” and “compromise”: agree with the right wing leadership 100%. Per Eric Cantor.
cleek
i hope he’s a flaming wingnut who looks like John Slattery and is running on a “rebirth” theme.
Punchy
Which Maine chick is the one with the god-awful voice, sounding half-shortbus, half-drunk?
Maude
She should change to Dem now. Lisa from Alaska prolly isn’t too fond of the Repukes of the TP variety about now. Together, they could tap dance on Rand Paul’s head a few times, that is, after McConnell has his time on the “dance floor”.
Davis X. Machina
She runs as an Independent, not a Democrat — they’re practically a party here already. She wins, with the lion’s share of the independents (they’re techically ‘unenrolleds’), the remaining boats-books-and-bonds Republicans from along salt water, and her consistent 1/3 of registered Democrats. I suspect she could, depending on opposition, actually capture a majority, not a plurality, in a three-way race.
Maine worships independents, and there’s a long-cherished dream in the state of a politics without politicians, as evinced by our amateur, term-limited legislature, and numerous referenda, initiatives, and people’s vetoes. We’ve had two two-term independent governors in the last 35 years, and another independent missed the Blaine House last week by less than 7000 votes. Bush finished third here, behind Perot, in ’92, despite being a resident. (Well, he is Summer People…)
freelancer
Unless Senators from WV are special, am I mistaken to think he won’t be up for a primary/election challenge until 2016?
FlipYrWhig
@Punchy: I think I knew a chick like that in college. But if it’s Senators you mean, Collins.
Boudica
@cleek: Ha! I just watched that on Hulu. I don’t usually watch 30 Rock, but I love Slattery-and he was hysterical. Now I’ll forward the Hulu link to my Rhode Island Republican in-laws!
beltane
@Punchy: That’s Susan Collins, another fake moderate.
Maine’s gubernatorial race was a total FAIL this year, resulting in a teabagger getting elected with only 38% of the vote.
cleek
@Boudica:
he really was. i was mucho impressed.
he does an awesome job on Mad Men, but he plays an awesome black-helicopter-wingnut. and sells a mean Lincoln MKX, too!
dmsilev
@freelancer: He’s serving out the remainder of Robert Byrd’s term, which ends in Jan 2013. So, assuming that he doesn’t want to be a 2-year Senator, he’s going to run for a full term during the 2012 campaign.
dms
beltane
@Davis X. Machina: Maine’s love of independents didn’t help Eliot Cutler much this year. The independent thing only tends to work out if the Democrats don’t field a candidate.
Mark S.
Christmas comes early for Mr. Cole: his two favorite guest columnists at WaPo, Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen, have a follow-up to their Obama is the black Nixon piece. Hold on to your monocles, people:
Next week, they will be advocating the only way to save the presidency would be for Obama to kill himself.
Roger Moore
@dr. bloor:
The hush hush part isn’t that she’s going to be challenged. It’s the identity of this specific challenger. Though if the field is going to be packed, he might want to get his name out there ASAP to get ahead of the crowd.
Mark
The O-Dog is no longer rotating president-for-a-day. That means as much to me as her crushing defeat.
FlipYrWhig
@Davis X. Machina: Definitely independent. I don’t think there’s any question of it. She and Lieberman could be a party of two. I think we’ll start to see a lot of “independents” over the next few years as the conservative hardliners continue their purge but the old-line pro-business strong-defense non-Bible-thumper Republicans in the electorate continue to hold out hope that their party isn’t only comprised of zealots and grifters. _Especially_ if it’s true that Michael Bloomberg is thinking of a presidential run. “Independent” will be the new hotness.
ETA: I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Manchin ran for reelection as an “independent,” citing frustration with Democratic orthodoxy.
Davis X. Machina
@beltane: Cutler narrowly missed, beating a well-known Democrat — and what hurt him were the other independents. Scott Moody’s vote would have put him in the Blaine House.
JGabriel
John Cole:
It’s funny, I was just thinking about this yesterday, so I already have it analyzed.
Definitely Independent.
Probably after they throw her out, depending on whether Snowe can still get a ballot line that late or not. I don’t think she wants to try a write-in candidacy, even though it looks like that will turn out okay for Murkowski.
Snowe has her own base among Maine Republicans (29% apparently). She loses most them if she if turns coat. And she’d still get primaried, but by a Democrat with his or her own base in the party, c.f. Arlen Spector and Joe Sestak.
So Independent, not Democrat.
Murkowski and Lieberman won their independent campaigns after being kicked out of their respective parties, but neither Crist nor Spector benefited from leaving the party before they lost their primaries. I’m not sure why — maybe people dislike a turncoat, but like an independent fighter?
Whatever the cause, it looks like waging a primary fight first, then going indie after you’ve lost, is the winning combination.
So, if Snowe goes by recent history, she’ll wait till she is kicked out and then run as an Independent.
.
Nick
@freelancer:
Manchin was elected in a Special election to replace Robert Byrd and has to run again when Byrd’s seat is up in 2012.
Dennis SGMM
Just what we need: Joe Lieberman in drag.
cleek
@JGabriel:
Murkowski (is her name really that hard to spell?) had the benefit of running against a dim-witted, quasi-fascist, hypocritical idiot. not even Alaska’s rugged, independent soshulists could let that guy drive.
Nick
@Mark S.: One of the things I think we should do here is have our Presidential terms be like Mexico or Chile, where you serve six years and cannot serve consecutive terms. I think not having to run for reelection allows someone to not have to worry about a left flank or a right flank or whatever. Congress should have to worry about that, not the head of state.
Nick
@Dennis SGMM:
I think she’d be better than Lieberman. Lieberman is a douche because he lost a Democratic primary and holds a grudge against the left bigger than the state he represents.
FlipYrWhig
@Dennis SGMM: _We_ don’t need such a thing, but the DC media would splooge all over the place.
Davis X. Machina
@JGabriel:
The timing on that is potentially difficult. One reading of state law would require a candidate already declared as a member of a party to change to Unenrolled before January 1 of the election year, far in advance of the state convention. (Link is PDF.)
Nick
@JGabriel: I agree. Snowe’s only path to reelection is as an Independent. She wins as an Indy easily.
She’ll lose either a GOP or Democratic primary, but she’ll beat whatever teabagger or lefty the parties throw at her.
And she’s not unpopular enough to risk electing a teabagger. LePage wouldn’t be Governor-elect if the Democrats had seen Libby Mitchell’s collapse a few weeks earlier and pushed behind Cutler.
Comrade Mary
@cleek: Heh. WIN!
Lev
Snowe will become an independent, perhaps a GOP-caucusing one. Republicans might retake the Senate next time around, and she’d be in line for a gavel. The absolute best option would be for her to just retire and let a non-seat filler take a crack at it, but that’s not going to happen.
What would be interesting to me is if Murkowski pulls a Lieberman and starts voting with the Dems more often. I mean, she could legitimately pull it off if she wanted to, since she didn’t win on the GOP ticket, and it would be an excuse to strut, which all senators love to do. I suspect they all envy Lieberman and would love to do what he does if they could get away with it, but most of them couldn’t. And for Lisa herself? They already stripped her of her leadership role anyway. She has nothing to lose. Could be interesting.
FlipYrWhig
@Nick: Yeah, but Lieberman is pretty good on the environment and sexuality, off the top of my head (terrible on war, terrorism, and insurance). Is Snowe good on anything “liberal”?
sloan
So teabaggers still think they can win everywhere in 2012, even after they lost more primaries and/or seats than they won in 2010.
Right now I think Romney is their best shot in 2012 because he tends not to say crazy shit and has good Republican hair. Sure, he’s a bit of a dork, but I haven’t seen him waving a Gadsen flag while wearing Ye Olde Halloween Costume on the National Mall.
But how the hell does Mitt “Obamacare” Romney win a Republican primary when popular incumbent Republicans can’t win their own damn primaries? And seriously – Huckabee, Gingrich, Palin, Dark Horse? If a non-teabagger can’t win by being merely experienced, electable, poised and loaded with cash then how would a …yawn… Thune or Pawlenty pull it off?
When I see Republicans eating their own I don’t understand what they think the end game is. WTF.
JGabriel
cleek:
Two points:
1) Lieberman still won despite a reasonably solid candidate in Ned Lamont.
2) Whoever beats Snowe in the GOP primary as the Tea Party candidate is likely to be just as much a dim-witted, quasi-fascist, hypocritical idiot as Joe Miller, Sharon Angle, and Christine O’Donnell. It’s not like the Maine Republicans want to replace Snowe with another “moderate”.
.
Mnemosyne
@JGabriel:
Yep. The one big downside of primarying Specter was that it demonstrated to other Republicans that there’s no point in jumping ship to the Democrats, because Democratic voters will get rid of you PDQ. So any remaining moderate Republicans are going to either suck it up and vote in lockstep no matter what the leadership does or go independent.
Davis X. Machina
When not whipped hard by her party, ANWR, choice, DADT…. She has not enjoyed being the 40th vote against cloture.
Nick
@FlipYrWhig:
well environmental, sexual, other social issues, unemployment benefits. she may be to the left of Lieberman on some foreign policy issues. She wasn’t so unreasonable on HCR, probably less so than Nelson or Lieberman. That’s why the President pursued her. I’d kill to have her public option trigger in the bill now. At least some sort of public option would be written in law.
FlipYrWhig
@Lev:
Agreed. I think a de facto “centrist party” will always be in the news, always getting stroked by the Broders of the world, and can have a hell of a lot of influence on policy too. Crist winning would have hastened that development, but I think it’s coming, because the old-line Republicans don’t have a home anymore, and patching together the old-line Republicans with the “fiscal responsibility” Democrats would be a viable pseudo-party. This “vital center” party is not the third party I’d create, because it duplicates an always-irksome wing of the Democrats and would be “moderate” without being _populist_.
But, man, the publicity and praise would be off the charts.
Probably get kind words from Jon Stewart, too.
tkogrumpy
She will become an Independent.
Lev
@Nick: That’s a pretty old idea. The Confederates put it in their Constitution, actually. Lucky for us that meant they got stuck with Jefferson Davis for the whole war, but that doesn’t necessarily speak to its merit.
I think I’m against a single six-year term because I think running for re-election makes presidents actually work to pass important and popular programs to get another term. I’m loathe to use Dubya as an example, but he fits–he got a fair amount of domestic policy done in his first term and jack shit done in his second. He didn’t have to run for anything else, he had no successor, so he just ran out the clock.
Davis X. Machina
@FlipYrWhig: You could easily get an American version of the old CDU/CSU + SPD Grand Coalition, with the teahadis in their solitary, splenetic, but doctrinally pure splendor.
JGabriel
sloan:
Think? End game? What’s that got to do with anything?
They’re taking their country back! Then they’ll get rid of the income tax because gov’t will be small enough to run on just the sales tax — and the economy will get all better because the unemployed will have much more money to spend without that nasty income tax!
And all the uppity … liberals … will get what’s coming to them too! Second Amendment Remedies!
.
cleek
@JGabriel:
sure, but Lieberman really is a moderately-tempered moderate. if moderation is your thang, Lieberman was it (don’t rock the boat, keep the pork flowin, don’t radicalize either way, etc). Miller? psycho.
the Maine GOP base ain’t the only ones with a vote in the general
Lev
@FlipYrWhig: Lieberman’s not going to win another term. The Repubs are through with him since he supported health care and are going to field a real candidate, perhaps Tom Foley. The Dems have a number of options, but my guess is they go with sophomore Rep. Chris Murphy. My guess is Murphy wins the three-way race, if Lieberman doesn’t just retire and let him win big.
Nick
@Lev:
Not anymore. With the country the way it is, I’m not sure I want them to pass anything “popular”
Alex S.
Not only Olympia Snowe will get a primary, but Scott Brown, too.
WyldPirate
@El Cid:
Snowe could roll on down to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and talk to the resident there. He seems to be getting ready to get really schooled again on Eric Cantor’s little lesson.
The old Constitutional law professor can tutor Olympia! Now that’s some bipartisanship for you!
cleek
@Lev:
really?
i’d bet they go with the least-charismatic, most-ethically-challenged machine pol they can find.
sloan
@JGabriel: I know, I know. I just want it to make sense. (Ha ha ha!) I remember how Republicans insisted that Palin had helped the ticket by riling up the base, but they never seemed to consider how many voters were appalled by her and how the much larger anti-Palin vote likely cancelled out her supporters.
Now we seem to be seeing the same thing with 2010. “Oh sure, most Tea Party Republicans lost, but they brought out the base!” As if the Republican base usually stays home on election day.
Nick
@cleek:
Yes, Chris Murphy
Nick
@sloan:
Sounds familiar.
FlipYrWhig
@Nick: The base can never fail, it can only _be_ failed!
Backbencher
The day after Snowe loses, Susan Collins will have an op-ed in the Washington Post saying that moveon.org liberals are as much to blame as tea-partiers for her moderate friend losing a Republican primary.
PurpleGirl
@freelancer: IIRC, he’s filling the last part of Robert Byrd’s last term. Like Kirsten Gillibrand will also be up in 2014 for her own first full term.
Martin
More evidence of the secondary effects of ACA:
If employers can help improve wellness in the interest of saving themselves costs, that’s going to pay dividends for Medicaid/Medicare.
WyldPirate
@Martin:
This is at the heart of most of our country’s medical care problems. The lack of an effort to improve “wellness” and to educate people when there is still a chance to prevent the accumulation of damage caused by poor choices in lifestyle.
We poor hundreds of billions of dollars into treating what are essentially diseases that developed over the course of a lifetime of bad lifestyle choices. Yet we cut programs in schools like phys ed, health and nutrition. We ride everywhere we could walk and we’re faced by a blizzard of bullshit in food choices that are just this side of poison.
It’s going to get much worse, too. Kids–a lot of them–are starting to show up with Type II diabetes. Many of their “more fit” peers–just the slightly chubby ones–are beginning to develop metabolic syndrome and are well on the road to developing diabetes, hypertentsion, atherosclerosis. There is literally a slow boil epidemic in kids and young adults today who will be developing the type of problems in their 40s that many people today don’t face until their 60s and 70s.
It’s going to be ugly.
Martin
@WyldPirate: Yeah, and the wingnuts are going to blow a fuse that someone is telling them what to do.
America, where libertarianism rules until you turn 65, and then it’s full-bore soçialism all the way to the grave.
Jager
@Mark S.:
The only “hard decision” to be made is to raise the fucking upper tax rate by 3 per centage points above 250k…I think the average high earner above that amount makes around 475…that’s a 6700 hundred dollar tax increase on 225k of income….how tough is that to sell to the general public? Get me a couple of smart kids, I’ll put them in dark blue suits, red ties and flag pins and we’ll go town to town and sell that program!
Then we can go out and sell increasing the upper limit on SS to around 130k from 108 and change…then it will be fixed for the rest of the century. People! This is not brain surgery, it is salesmanship!
Mnemosyne
@Martin:
I work for a Giant Evil Corporation and there’s a HUGE push to get us all to do things like get our annual physical, lower our cholesterol, etc. Like cash money on the table (or deposited directly into your FSA) kinds of incentives.
They’ll throw bucks your way if you sign up for an anti-smoking program, or if you register with Weight Watchers. All kinds of stuff. You get X number of credits for carpooling, but X times 2 if you walk, run or bike to work. I can barely keep up with all of the offers.
Yutsano
Just out of curiosity, am I supposed to feel sorry for her now? Or can I just laugh manically and point at her potential folly?
A Humble Lurker
@Yutsano:
Oh, I think the latter will do just fine.
victory
She will lose in 2012 regardless. Teahead will force her to run indy, but it being a presidential election year Obama on the ticket will put the democrat over the top from all the straight dem ticket votes.
Pat
Snowe would never change to the Democratic party. She is too much “old New England” for such a drastic move. She may go Independent, like Lincoln Chaffee did in Rhode Island which won him the governor’s seat which is being vacated by a two term Republican.
Michael D.
You know what will happen if Olympia Snowe gets teabagged?
Democrats will pick up a Senate seat in Maine.
Bring it on.