Never again will I vote for a liberal Republican.

We do not send a senator to Washington DC to "get along". We send them to represent our views and ideas. Snowe says that the reason Republicans lost the last election was because they were not "moderate" enough or didn't reach across the aisle. How wrong she is. It is exactly her politics that represent the failure of the Republicans (Bob Dole, John McCain). What Republicans USED to stand for was conservative ideals. Now those of us who are conservative feel we have no representation in Augusta or Washington. Our elected Republican officials vote against everything that we used to stand for; Family (they vote for abortion, gay "rights"), smaller government (they vote for higher taxes, eliminating tax cuts), protecting our soverignty and borders (they vote for "comprehensive immigration, giving illegals all of OUR rights). Until the Republicans return to their Reaganesque roots, we will be a minority party with Snow and Collins, the RINO's (Republican In Name Only) representing us. I no longer am proud of republicans and no longer call myself one. I am a Conservative and will not vote for anyone who is a Liberal, including our two "esteemed" senators. Maine will continue to elect them because once elected, it's a lifetime job and all they care about is getting re-elected. Woe to our country!!

Right on howbi. She lost my vote next time around.

centrist? moderate? not . liberal yes , socialist yes, trator yes.

Thumbs down on the first four comments. Esquire magazine called Snowe one of the few grownups in the Senate. I didn't vote for her because she's a Republican, but come on, the angry name-calling is too much. As for the "Reaganesque roots": When Reagan took office, a CEO made about 30 times what the person answering the phone in a CEO's office did. Now the CEO makes 300 times as much. A fortunate few are making obscene amounts of money while the rest of us have to work harder and harder to afford basic necessities like health care and housing. The legacy of Reagan is that the rich are so rich that they are completely separated from the world in which the rest of us live. Their wealth isn't trickling down, it's being spent on private jets, islands, etc. How a person of limited means can continue to support the Republicans and their "screw the poor" agenda is beyond me. There will always be income inequality, but it's not Socialist to say enough is enough.

All this talk about working with the left. When was the last time the left worked with the right?

Olympia Snowe has causes catastrophic damage to this country by gleefully supporting the bankrupting of the American people for generations to come. Her "moderate" friends have lost their seats because the people are sick and tired of their lies! Why vote for a RINO when you can vote for a Democrat? At least the Democrat admits they are a Democrat! Olympia Snowe has been stuck in the Washington elite class for way too long to realize how many people are sick of her antics. I hope she doesn't run next time. If she does, I will vote for any Democrat over her. We, the people, need to take this country back! It's time to rid ourselves of the terrible "Representatives" that are in Washington and in Maine! Common sense through Conservatism will prevail!

Our Senators should be in Washington representing our state, not worrying about who has displayed bad behavior and who did what to whom. We're not electing parents, we're electing state repressentation.

We need someone who has made a payroll to run for this seat.....Peter vigue...any interest?

SammieJ, saltair, maineboy, bigdog, howbri and Tiff49 - when are you going to put "Country First" before your political party?

Any comments about Senator Snowe's lack integrity or ability to work for this state and for the betterment of our country are made by people with an age that is higher than their IQ. I think I hear the starting bell for McDonald's - time to go flip burgers, chumps - make sure to say your prayers before you leave your trailers.

BTW - it was your party who got us into this mess, why should the country care what you think or say.

When was the last time the left worked with the right?

Oh, let's see... How about giving Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq? We lived to regret that one.

Thank you, Senator Snowe, for exhibiting common sense and the ability to find common ground. Without sensible people in the middle, how would anything get done in the US Senate?

Peter Vigue is a great choice. My problem with Snowe (and Collins, for that matter) is that she voted to pass the biggest spending bill in history without even reading it. Nobody read the damned thing before they voted for it. This is NOT what I want happening in Washington! They ALL need to go. Vote the rascals out and try new rascals. How could they be any worse?

Olympia will work with anybody who will throw a lucrative contract Jock's way.

Some "centrist!" Snowe and her partner-in-crime, Senator Susan Colins, helped prlong the agony of the Bush years --- a crumbling economy, rampant unemployment, a staggering and unprecedented national debt, a phony war in Iraq that's claimed over 4,000 American lives and maimed hundreds of thousands of more young American heroes, a housing industry in decline racked by deregulation that allowed thieves to permeate the banking and investment industries. Save the baloney, Olympia. You, Collins and the rest of the Bush Gang helped destroy our nation's economic competitiveness and assaulted our Constitution to the point where lies, deception and malfeasance represented our domestic and foreign policies. What a disgrace!

excuse me ! I am putting country first . I happen to love my country the way she is. It is not the governments place to interfer with private bussiness or the way one chooses to live one's life. Their job is to protect us and enforce our laws. READ the constitution!

freerange, I think we are better off when nothing gets "done".

Democrats and centrists need to go!

Snowe and Collins are Republicans but this friggin state has been over-run with liberal democrats! They folded and voted with the democrats! What needs to happen is to get rid of the liberal democrats in Maine and return our state to the republican independence we once enjoyed!

The Democrats need to go? Who put the country in the mess it's in right now? The Bush administration! It's amazing that people just want to gloss over that little fact. The whole world hates us because of him, and the economy is in the tank because of him. Getting along in congress is the only way anything will ever get accomplished. Petty fighting gets nothing done. If that's what you want, so be it, but don't complain when it ends up being a do nothing congress.

Republicans should be glad to have two Senators in this predominately Democratic leaning state, but as usual they act like spoiled children when they don't get their way. The new president and democratic majority is only in office just over three months and the whining, pissing and moaning have already escalated. Coming off from what I feel will be judged as one of the WORST presidential administrations, you would think that they may be a little modest and tone down the rhetoric. However, those are the dittoheads for you...

BTW... Before you typecast me as a "leftist", I am a fiscally conservative, socially liberal independent voter.

You arent fiscally conservative... either that or you haven't been paying attention!!

If they want to be something other than Republicans than they need to run as something other than republican. So far only the Liberals on this board are giving them any support so maybe they should run as something other than republican and allow some real republicans to run.

"BTW - it was your party who got us into this mess, why should the country care what you think or say. "

I've seen this a couple times and it makes me wonder if you leftist here really believe that Bush and company set Freddie and annie up to give away all of those loans to people who could not afford it? Do you really think he wrote the laws that allowed the sweatheart on down payment deals to people making $10 an hour who had no business trying to buy a home?

Those bad loans were the start of this snowball so if you are going to fault someone why wouldn't you fault those people?

Really, does it matter who did what to whom at this point? Here we are and it is IMPERATIVE that we work TOGETHER to get out of here so the coming generations will find themselves somewhere better. Snowe has demonstrated critical thinking skills in her bipartisan politics. The divide between the poor and the rich is immense and there is not much left of the middle class. The American dream has become the American nightmare. If you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem. Unity builds greatness.

I am neither Republican nor Democrat but will vote for what I see as upholding genuine Christian values. Today we do not have a political party that does that so we have to pick the next best thing. I think people like George Bush wore the face of my values but lived the life of satan, metaphorically speaking and that included Rove, Rumsfield and absolutely so, Cheney. They destroyed the main afbric of integrity, altruism, goodness, honesty and integrity. I'll vote for Snowe and Collins...they best represent my values against total liberalism and they always bridge the gap. I'd also vote for Obama although I do not subscribe to his radical humanism but thats better than murdering people over a deceitful war. The offshore accounts of halibertin were 9 before Cheney moved in and now thay are 44...go figure. But, I cast all these evil people in the Hands of God and he can deal with them. I'll take my peace and every time I see the face of one of them I look beyond, instead of allowing the harted I feel for them entering my heart.....like the message of their appearance wants....I look to the greater Light shining in hope and all thats good as the world spins more and more out of control to the promise we all await.

I think Freewill hit the nail on the head. So many responses to this article are exactly the way they are working in congress. Pointing fingers and blocking bi-partisenship get's us what Obama did as his first act. Reversing Bush policy. When policy is generated by the majority without respect for the minority, it is only time until the numbers switch and reversals occur there as well. Maine is lucky to have representatives that are looking out for the best interests of thier constituents and not their parties.

1.) You right wing whackos lost the election because you KNOW what's right for the rest of Americans - and you're in the minority. You're wrong. Got it? You'll always lose on that premise, particularly following 8 years of enriching the uber-wealthy on the backs of taxpayers while allowing the rest of us to suck hind tit. Convince me GWB's policies were fiscally conservative to the benefit of anyone but the very, very wealthy.

2.) The right-wing-whacko crap, and the inability to reach any level of bipartisanship will undo America, because there's MILLIONS of us who are 2nd Amendment supporters, fiscally conservative yet socially responsible, unlike yourselves. But you don't want ANYTHING that doesn't fit Rush Limbaugh's agenda. I don't know anyone that wants their taxes increased. IF, for whatever reason, the lies perpetrated about "socialism" against the current administration ever DID come toward some form of "truth," you idjits have alienated millions of Americans who might be on your side with all your "right noise." Too many obvious untruths, too many of you following the hate mongers in jackboot cadence.

3.) The population of the U.S. has increased by nearly 50% since I was born. So, if the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the "have/have not" gap continues to widen while populations increase exponentially, what is the result? Civil war?

The only thing you can be certain of is conservatives make no sense. Their economic theories - wrong. Their political positions - hypocritical. As many above prove.

I don't like to cut and paste, but it's hard to disagree with much of the following:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 13, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

Tea Parties Forever

By PAUL KRUGMAN

This is a column about Republicans — and I’m not sure I should even be writing it.

Today’s G.O.P. is, after all, very much a minority party. It retains some limited ability to obstruct the Democrats, but has no ability to make or even significantly shape policy.

Beyond that, Republicans have become embarrassing to watch. And it doesn’t feel right to make fun of crazy people. Better, perhaps, to focus on the real policy debates, which are all among Democrats.

But here’s the thing: the G.O.P. looked as crazy 10 or 15 years ago as it does now. That didn’t stop Republicans from taking control of both Congress and the White House. And they could return to power if the Democrats stumble. So it behooves us to look closely at the state of what is, after all, one of our nation’s two great political parties.

One way to get a good sense of the current state of the G.O.P., and also to see how little has really changed, is to look at the “tea parties” that have been held in a number of places already, and will be held across the country on Wednesday. These parties — antitaxation demonstrations that are supposed to evoke the memory of the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution — have been the subject of considerable mockery, and rightly so.

But everything that critics mock about these parties has long been standard practice within the Republican Party.

Thus, President Obama is being called a “socialist” who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 percentage points less than it was for most of the Reagan administration. Bizarre.

But the charge of socialism is being thrown around only because “liberal” doesn’t seem to carry the punch it used to. And if you go back just a few years, you find top Republican figures making equally bizarre claims about what liberals were up to. Remember when Karl Rove declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to the 9/11 terrorists?

Then there are the claims made at some recent tea-party events that Mr. Obama wasn’t born in America, which follow on earlier claims that he is a secret Muslim. Crazy stuff — but nowhere near as crazy as the claims, during the last Democratic administration, that the Clintons were murderers, claims that were supported by a campaign of innuendo on the part of big-league conservative media outlets and figures, especially Rush Limbaugh.

Speaking of Mr. Limbaugh: the most impressive thing about his role right now is the fealty he is able to demand from the rest of the right. The abject apologies he has extracted from Republican politicians who briefly dared to criticize him have been right out of Stalinist show trials. But while it’s new to have a talk-radio host in that role, ferocious party discipline has been the norm since the 1990s, when Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, became known as “The Hammer” in part because of the way he took political retribution on opponents.

Going back to those tea parties, Mr. DeLay, a fierce opponent of the theory of evolution — he famously suggested that the teaching of evolution led to the Columbine school massacre — also foreshadowed the denunciations of evolution that have emerged at some of the parties.

Last but not least: it turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News.

But that’s nothing new, and AstroTurf has worked well for Republicans in the past. The most notable example was the “spontaneous” riot back in 2000 — actually orchestrated by G.O.P. strategists — that shut down the presidential vote recount in Florida’s Miami-Dade County.

So what’s the implication of the fact that Republicans are refusing to grow up, the fact that they are still behaving the same way they did when history seemed to be on their side? I’d say that it’s good for Democrats, at least in the short run — but it’s bad for the country.

For now, the Obama administration gains a substantial advantage from the fact that it has no credible opposition, especially on economic policy, where the Republicans seem particularly clueless.

But as I said, the G.O.P. remains one of America’s great parties, and events could still put that party back in power. We can only hope that Republicans have moved on by the time that happens.

vichet... I don't necessarily agree with everything that has been going on recently... bailouts etc. My point is that I am willing to give the current administration a chance to fix the f'ed up things that occurred during the last eight years. How about you?

Republicans would be wise to stop being obstructionists and get to work on real solutions to fix the mess we are in. There is enough fingerpointing and blame to go around but please stop looking to the past... we need action and we need it now. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. I respect Snowe and Collins since they are willing to break with party rule and develop their own solutions. We need more independent thinkers in both parties, instead of the lock-step political agendas that are so commonly pursued .

On 4/13/09 at 8:02 AM, maineboy wrote:

excuse me ! I am putting country first . I happen to love my country the way she is. It is not the governments place to interfer with private bussiness or the way one chooses to live one's life. Their job is to protect us and enforce our laws. READ the constitution!

Ummmm yeah maineboy... you should tell that to your elected republican leaders who have been trying to legislate how EVERYONE lives their life by ramming the evangelical christian values down our throats

The problem has become far more complex since Pres Obama has taken office. Every dollar spent to prop up all of these failed business models has created new problems for others. Take the TARP money for one. It was intially supposed to go to healthy banks so they could buy faileded banks. Now its going directly to the banks with a failed business model. It doesnt make since. Japan proved that didnt work during the nineties. Much of the stimulus money is going for the creation of new government jobs in the single biggest government non-military payroll increase in history. Not to mention non-profits...

all that's missing from maineboy's comments are the "Glenn Beck Tears"

What happened to all the comments in this thread?

Wierd, now they are all back. Last time I looked at this page only the first 2 comments listed.

"Republicans would be wise to stop being obstructionists and get to work on real solutions to fix the mess we are in. "

You mean like trying to stop your president from spending more money in two months than Bush spent in 8 years so that we would not quadruple the deficit? Yeah I can see why you would want us to stop doing that.

"I respect Snowe and Collins since they are willing to break with party rule and develop their own solutions."

Like I said the Libs here seem to love them. I hope you vote for them to hold office as a Democrat then because most Republicans are going to choose someone else to run for us.

If that means a Democrat wins in Maine so be it. It is no different than what we have now.

some of you clowns like to say she doesn't represent the people of Maine....give me a break. She just doesn't represent the views of most of the morons who post of this website. A majority of people in this state voted for Obama in the last election, and a majority of people in this state vote (either side) for common sense, not party hackery. Collins and Snowe are moderates and because of that still represent the state of Maine

On 4/13/09 at 8:35 AM, sunnie1959 wrote: Repeated separate thumbs down will cause comment to be hidden

The Democrats need to go? Who put the country in the mess it's in right now? The Bush administration! It's amazing that people just want to gloss over that little fact. The whole world hates us because of him, and the economy is in the tank because of him. Getting along in congress is the only way anything will ever get accomplished. Petty fighting gets nothing done. If that's what you want, so be it, but don't complain when it ends up being a do nothing congress.

It amazes me that people blame Bush for the mess we are in now. The Republicans have not had control of the Senate or Congress for the past 8 years. So in effect it has been the Democrats who led us down this road, as everyone knows unless the Presidents party is in control he serves at the whims of the Senate and Congress. As for the War in Iraq, people also forget that the Congress, Senate and UN authorized the attack. It was the Democrats who kept saying that Fannie and Freddie were financially stable not the Republicans. Collins and Snowe helped ensure that my kids and grand kids will be paying down this debt. Yes the country voted for Obama but I bet the majority did not foresee Socialism coming to power in America. The article also shows she supports socialized medicine. Just ask people from New Brunswick if that works. There are better solutions to the medical issue. It is not the federal governments responsibility anyways. The states are responsible for medical and should expand an insurance system, not take over health care.

Bangorean! Bangorean! Bangorean!

Sen. Snowe "compromised" us, our children and grandchildren into poverty - and she's proud of it? If she had an honest bone in her body, she would change party affiliation. She votes Democrat more than half the time, as did Chafee, who was also no "moderate" - and a letter to her about that vote generated a two and a half, single spaced letter of "justification" response - the first time I've gotten any response from her office on any subject. I surely hope that indicates she is scared this time, but the article (was it written by her usual liberal friends perhaps?) indicates she could not care less about the people of this state, or the future of this country.

TERM LIMITS------TERM LIMITS------TEM LIMITS...................... MOST OF THESE COMMENTS SOUND AS IF THEY WERE WRITTEN BY SOME OF THE "BELTWAY PIRATES"---- WHEN ARE WE GOING TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE CAREER POLITICIANS ARE NOT WHAT THE FOREFATHERS HAD IN MIND WHEN THE SYSTEM WAS ESTABLISHED...........WHO CAN AGREE WITH THE DECISIONS THAT ARE BEING MADE BY "OUR GOVERNMENT" AND NOT SAY THEY ARE PARTICANT........... IT IS TIME TO GET RID OF THESE TWO SENATORS ASAP. AND SHAKE THE BUSHES FOR SOMEONE WHO WILL REALLY REPRESENTS THE STATE.......JUST LOOK AT ALL THE REVERSE DECISIONS ALREADY, GITMO WAS NOT GOOD BUT NOW WE WILL HOLD THESE PEOPLE IN AFAGHANASTAN. WIRE TAPS WAS INVASION OF PRIVACY BUT WE CALL IT BY A DFFRENT NAME AND IT IS OK..... IF THE "TEA PARTIES" ARE THE ONLY OUTLET FOR THE FRUSTRATED PEOPLE THEN SO BE IT, ATLEAST THEY ARE FROM ALL PARTIES AND ARE TRYING TO LET THE THE LAWMAKERS KNOW THAT THEY ARE NOT HAPPY WITH THINGS . (SPELLING ISN'T THAT GOOD BUT AN INDIAN OF A FAST HORSE WILL NEVER NOTICE)............ I WOULD USE BIGGER WORDS BUT I DON'T KNW HOW TO SPELL THEM.

IT IS GREAT TO HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY T POST COMMENTS, I HOPE THE SENATORS, ETC. READ THEM

I don't know why Snowe is called a moderate. She voted for all of bush's bills. ...that took a budget surplus into economic chaos. And stripped the constitution.