An Olympian Effort

Maine Republican Olympia Snowe lets the GOP have it in the NY Times op-ed section today.

I could have hardly imagined then that, in 2009, we would fondly reminisce about the time when we were disappointed to fall short of 60 votes in the Senate. Regrettably, we failed to learn the lessons of Jim Jeffords’s defection in 2001. To the contrary, we overreached in interpreting the results of the presidential election of 2004 as a mandate for the party. This resulted in the disastrous elections of 2006 and 2008, which combined for a total loss of 51 Republicans in the House and 13 in the Senate — with a corresponding shift of the Congressional majority and the White House to the Democrats.

It was as though beginning with Senator Jeffords’s decision, Republicans turned a blind eye to the iceberg under the surface, failing to undertake the re-evaluation of our inclusiveness as a party that could have forestalled many of the losses we have suffered.

It is true that being a Republican moderate sometimes feels like being a cast member of “Survivor” — you are presented with multiple challenges, and you often get the distinct feeling that you’re no longer welcome in the tribe. But it is truly a dangerous signal that a Republican senator of nearly three decades no longer felt able to remain in the party.

I smell another flip coming, frankly. To go public in the "liberal paper of record" to attack the GOP (if she was privately grousing, it would have been in the WSJ's opinion section) to me says she's looking for somebody to try to talk her out of joining Arlen. But I think she's made up her mind. This has all the hallmarks of somebody writing the political version of a jumper note: She's going to take the plunge unless somebody on the right stops her.

And I don't think any of them will.

On the other hand, psychoanalyzing a Republican politician is like herding Jell-O with a tennis racket: it's messy and counterproductive, and in the end who knows what the hell good you're doing even trying. If you're going to switch parties woman, do it already.