Correction: This post originally attributed the op-ed critical of Sen. Snowe to the editors of the Portland Press Herald. In fact, the op-ed was penned by former Snowe rival and ex-Rep. Tom Andrews (D-ME). As such, the op-ed is not evidence of Snowe losing support from moderate Republicans as this post initially suggested. We regret the error.
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Recent polling suggests Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) would have much better luck running for re-election as an independent than as a Republican, to avoid a tea party-backed candidate from the right. But that would mean abandoning her party, its institutional support, her seniority in the Senate and so on. In a Tuesday op-ed in the Portland Press Herald — an influential newspaper in Southern Maine — former Rep. Tom Andrews (D-ME), who lost to Snowe in the 1994 race in which she was first elected to the Senate, takes Snowe to task for what he claims is her pandering to tea partiers in her party.
“Sen. Olympia Snowe has apparently decided that it is better to bow to political pressure from the tea party movement than to stand up for the interests of Maine,” Andrews writes. “How else to explain her vote last week for a federal spending measure that would harm Maine’s economy while punishing thousands of Mainers, including seniors, veterans, preschool children, college students and families struggling to keep their oil furnace running?”
What follows is a breakdown of what Andrews says the House GOP budget, which Snowe voted for, would mean for Maine, paired with the fact that Snowe’s repeatedly taken positions over the years that have exploded the deficit.
You are not serious about balancing the federal deficit when you support maintaining the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans at a price of $2.5 trillion over 10 years — exactly the amount that congressional Republicans want to slash and burn from the federal budget over this same time period.
You are not serious about addressing the federal budget deficit when you repeatedly vote to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars for the war in Afghanistan.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone account for 23 percent of the federal budget deficit since 2003.
Snowe is extremely popular in Maine overall, but stands a decent chance of losing a GOP primary. Notwithstanding all the ominous polling data, her lurch to the right suggests she’s not willing to jump ship — at least not yet.
