THANK YOU OLYMPIA

I never voted for Olympia Snowe. In 2006 I voted for Jean Hay Bright. I probably would have voted for her in this year’s election, but unfortunately nobody is going to have that option. Imagine that. Me—a registered Independent, but admittedly and proudly liberal in the majority of my stances—voting for the Republican incumbent whose votes largely coincided with her own party (despite what the lunatic tea baggers are feeding you now).

Olympia Snowe represented what is best in our country. She is a woman, a representative of her constituents, who refused to cater to the fringe wing nuts out there who have been allowed to take over Congress because of campaign finance laws and the utterly absurd practice of gerrymandering state congressional districts in order to fix future elections.

I believe it’s the Rockefeller Republicans, so demonized by the right wing, who are actually more in line with most of this country. The vast majority of people in this country are moderates. They don’t want absence of government. They want a government that gets (good) stuff done. They want a government that works in the majority interest and enforces a fair system—one that ensures the needy can subsist and that business people aren’t handcuffed by absurd legislation. The people don’t want to be financially raped by their government in order to serve the interests of mega-corporations or finance big screen TVs for those who refuse to work, nor do they want to be literally raped by their government with mandatory trans-vaginal probes and other intrusions into their private lives. To use the cliché, people want government both out of their wallets AND out of their bedrooms. The majority of Americans don’t hate gays and women and they don’t care if gays get married. You’d just never know that judging by our elected officials. Unfortunately, our current system is set up so inflexible ideologues get elected by a very small minority of Americans who have the ability to finance an entire campaign on their weekend allowance. But I can go on forever about this subject—in fact, I probably will at some point.

Ideologues call Olympia Snowe a RINO basically for a handful of votes—the DADT repeal, a vote for the 2009 stimulus, voting to acquit Clinton, some pro-choice votes, voting for Obama’s supreme court appointees, and voting for stem cell research.

Olympia Snowe didn’t prescribe to the new standard and, as a result, Maine has lost one of its greatest elected officials. I didn’t agree with the majority of her votes, but I never feared that she’d vote against what she felt was best for her state because of partisan bullying. Maybe if more of the country followed the tendencies of our Maine Republican Senators—Snowe, Susan Collins, Margaret Chase Smith, William Cohen—we’d be a better place.

Collins and Snowe both are two of the few Republicans supported by the Human Rights Campaign and both were integral in the repeal of DADT, especially Collins. Both of our current senators are also strong proponents of women’s rights. Apparently supporting equality for all Americans is antithetical to true conservatism.

William Cohen had the guts to break with his party over Nixon’s impeachment and also served under a Democratic President Clinton as Secretary of Defense. But I guess if you’re a true conservative, you’d never serve your country if it meant working with the other team. Ask Jon Huntsman how that works.

Margaret Chase Smith, one of the greatest politicians of all time, in addition to supporting New Deal legislation early in her career, was the first in the Senate to have the guts to stand up against McCarthyism. Every American should read her Declaration of Conscience.

But alas, true conservatism means that you must prescribe to the belief that anyone who disagrees with you is a Commie bastard and should be placed on blacklists, arrested, and subject to public interrogation by Congressmen whose right to throw out fabricated and unsupported accusations toward you is protected.

It makes me sad for our country when people who are willing to work with political opponents are dissuaded from running because we have a Congress that factions itself off like a high school clique.  Our selection of candidates has become so watered down for multiple reasons, not the least of which is because of the lunatics running the asylum in Washington. Representatives are elected to vote in the interest of their constituents, not to cower under the iron fist of their political fraternity. I can only hope that our next senator, like Senator Snowe, won’t cave to the pressures of their party affiliation if it means voting against what they believe is best for the country.  

Senator Snowe, you were one of the few left in Washington with any personal integrity. Thank you for serving our state and representing all of your constituents, whether we voted for you or not.