Snowe Removal in 2012?

[cpwill]

I have long advocated this; although I was even willing to donate money to her Democrat opponent, just to be rid of her and hopefully replace her next cycle.

...Tuesday was a bad night for Sen. Olympia Snowe. With conservative insurgents taking on GOP incumbents across the country, Snowe is a prime target for a Tea Party challenge in 2012. To fend off such a challenge, Snowe might have pointed to the failed candidacy of Christine O'Donnell in Delaware and warned Tea Party activists that if they want to hand a Republican seat to the Democrats the best way to do it would be to replace her on the ballot.

But that argument lost some of its currency when Tea Party favorite Paul LePage was elected Maine's first Republican governor since 1995. LePage campaigned on a promise to "shrink the size and scope of government" and "reverse the direction of the state" - and narrowly won the governorship on a wave of Tea Party enthusiasm that also swept Republican majorities into office in both houses of the state legislature...

A recent survey by Public Policy Polling found that only 29 percent of GOP voters support Snowe for reelection, while 63 percent want a more conservative candidate. These numbers mean trouble for Snowe, and they reflect the growing influence of the Tea Party in the Maine GOP. Tea Party activists not only helped secure the gubernatorial nomination for LePage, they took control of the state convention last summer, replacing the party's moderate platform with one reflecting Tea Party ideals. Fiscal conservatives are ascendant and emboldened in Maine, which means that Snowe could very well be denied the Republican nomination in 2012...

Much depends on whether a credible challenger emerges to take on Snowe. Conservative businessman Scott D'Amboise has declared his candidacy, but he was flattened 70 percent to 30 percent in his 2006 campaign for the House of Representatives. Another potential challenger is conservative former state senator Chandler Woodcock, the GOP's 2006 gubernatorial nominee, who leads Snowe by five points in a hypothetical match-up. Andrew Ian Dodge, Maine coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, says other candidates will soon declare their intention to challenge Snowe. "She is beatable," Dodge says, but "it will take money to beat her." Tea Partyers, he says, "don't want a quixotic candidate who beats her [in the primary] and then gets creamed in a general."

Right now, Snowe is still trying to convince Tea Partyers that she is one of them. She campaigned for LePage, and she recently told the Wall Street Journal, "The Tea Party is right. We've lost our way on fiscal issues," adding, "I have always been a budget hawk." She will have a chance to put those words into action in a lame-duck session of Congress, which must take up the extension of the Bush tax cuts and all the spending bills left unfinished by the outgoing Congress. However she votes in a lame duck, Tea Partyers are not likely to forget that Snowe was one of only three Republicans who voted for President Obama's $800 billion-plus stimulus, the largest spending bill in history and whose passage gave rise to the Tea Party movement. And while she voted "no" on final passage, Tea Partyers are well aware that she provided the only Republican vote for Obamacare in the Senate Finance Committee. Convincing Maine Republicans that she is a fiscal conservative will be a hard sell.

When the GOP had just 41 senators and needed Snowe to stand firm against increased spending, she sided with the Democrats. Now that Snowe needs to burnish her fiscal conservative credentials, she is tacking to the right - but the irony is, Republicans don't need her vote anymore. With the GOP's Senate ranks now at 46, Snowe will no longer be the "swing vote" that decides the fate of key legislation. Back when she held that deciding vote, pundits called her "The Most Powerful Senator." But, if Maine Republicans have their way, in two years' time she might not be a senator at all.

 

[Diogenes]

Fingers crossed. Snowe as a Republican reminds me of the closing scene in Animal Farm.

 

[haymarket]

Replacing Olympia Snowe with a right wing tea party type candidate will yield the same results of we recently saw in Delaware. I say go for it.

 

[DarkWizard12]

Replacing Olympia Snowe with a right wing tea party type candidate will yield the same results of we recently saw in Delaware. I say go for it.

Or what we saw in Florida. :shrug:

 

[haymarket]

Does Maine have a potential Rubio in the wings?

 

[StandUpChuck]

I would be very surprised to see Snowe lose in 2012. Mainers like "independents." Though technically a repub, Snowe doesn't toe the party line, and that makes her less of a thread to Democrats. I don't see true conservatism sweeping through Maine anytime soon despite the success of Paul LePage. His Independent competition, Eliot Cutler made a huge surge toward the end of the campaign and almost took out LePage election night. Unless LePage impresses the crap out of the state, which he likely won't, Snowe is safe.

 

[DarkWizard12]

Does Maine have a potential Rubio in the wings?

maybe, we don't really know untill 2012, or early 2011.

 

[DarkWizard12]

I would be very surprised to see Snowe lose in 2012. Mainers like "independents." Though technically a repub, Snowe doesn't toe the party line, and that makes her less of a thread to Democrats. I don't see true conservatism sweeping through Maine anytime soon despite the success of Paul LePage. His Independent competition, Eliot Cutler made a huge surge toward the end of the campaign and almost took out LePage election night. Unless LePage impresses the crap out of the state, which he likely won't, Snowe is safe.

i found it odd that cutler lost by only 2 points, when all polls showed lepage with a double digit lead going into november. What do you think happened?

 

[Redress]

Two years from now. What where democrats doing two years ago? Predicting the end of the republican party. Get back to me on this in 2012.

 

[zimmer]

Two years from now. What where democrats doing two years ago? Predicting the end of the republican party. Get back to me on this in 2012.

Obama was one of those circus rabbits. As was the 2006 election... won because of what? The Foley Wabbit fwom da hat.

Obama was on the docket last week, and he's not gonna change.
He's not that pragmatic.
Nor is Pelosi or Reid... Thank You God for such idiots as political adversaries.

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

This move to put Snowe on warning is not only about 2012, but now. By stating her ass is next... right now, she just might be pulled to the right on a few key votes... and who knows... a D or two as well.

This is as much about positioning Snowe for 2011 as it is for 2012.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Replacing Olympia Snowe with a right wing tea party type candidate will yield the same results of we recently saw in Delaware. I say go for it.

What?

You mean the Journolists will defend her leftist record and do everything to move the debate away from substance?
Might work again, but I wouldn't bet a whole lot on that succeeding in 2012.

That idiots like Castle, Rove (who pissed me off but good) and the R party will crap on their own?
Ahhhhhhh... don't count on it. I think that was a one-time special favor to the SAPs.

.

 

[haymarket]

Two years from now. What where democrats doing two years ago? Predicting the end of the republican party. Get back to me on this in 2012.

very true and beyond debate since its fairly self evident. The big question for me is two part: 1 - will the current political climate still be the dominant one in early 2012? 2- if not, will things be in a more advantageous position for Obama and the Democrats or will it get even worse?

I never thought I would live long enough to see a so called responsible political party take the NO NO NO stand of the Republicans that they have taken for themselves over the last two years. And I never ever thought that such a stand would be rewarded like it was in this election. This is not a normal period in our history and if we are not careful, we risk great danger ahead for all of us.

 

[cpwill]

Democrats have to defend 23 Senatorial seats in 2012 (many in states where Obama is quite unpopular); and they will be facing a house whose districts have just been redrawn by overwhelmingly Republican state governments. Interestingly, 2010 was actually the election where the cards were stacked against Republicans. as for NO NO NO, that is precisely what the American people were saying. Good for the Republicans to listen to them.

 

[Redress]

Democrats have to defend 23 Senatorial seats in 2012 (many in states where Obama is quite unpopular); and they will be facing a house whose districts have just been redrawn by overwhelmingly Republican state governments. Interestingly, 2010 was actually the election where the cards were stacked against Republicans. as for NO NO NO, that is precisely what the American people were saying. Good for the Republicans to listen to them.

None of which has to do with Snowe, which is the topic. I understand the desire to change the subject, but I happen to remember what it was.

 

[cpwill]

hey, youre the one who started it

 

[Redress]

hey, youre the one who started it

If by starting it you mean pointed out the relevant fact that the political climate two years from now can and probably will be quite different, as evidence by the changes in the last two years, I guess you could say I started it. However, you clearly where the one to bring in irrelevancies to change the subject when the flaws in your argument where pointed out.

 

[Bok Tuklo]

Another moderate purge?

Figures.

You cannot govern without the center. Period.

 

[cpwill]

If by starting it you mean pointed out the relevant fact that the political climate two years from now can and probably will be quite different, as evidence by the changes in the last two years, I guess you could say I started it. However, you clearly where the one to bring in irrelevancies to change the subject when the flaws in your argument where pointed out.

i don't really see where it's relevant to point out the implicit claim of your argument (that the political climate in two years might be better for democrats) was belied by the numbers involved in the next election cycle.

 

[Redress]

i don't really see where it's relevant to point out the implicit claim of your argument (that the political climate in two years might be better for democrats) was belied by the numbers involved in the next election cycle.

The overal senate situation in 2 years(dems having many more seats to defend than repubs) has exactly nothing to do with Snowe. However, the political climate in 2 years does have something to do with Snowe. This is not complicated stuff, in fact it is pretty simple.

 

[cpwill]

the dems having many more seats to defend than Snowe does effect the Maine race. If Democrats are diverting every resource they can get their hands on to 1. defending a large number of embattled incumbents and 2. trying to reelect the President; they're not going to have much to spend trying to pick up a seat. what we saw last election, as Democrats performed brutal triage and cut many of their vulnerable members off will play an impact here, as will the general increase in Republican turnout that comes with percieving 2012 as a 'sweep year'. both of these factors favor a Republican replacement for Snowe.

 

[haymarket]

The big increase in turnout in 2012 will be from Democrats and those who elected Obama last time but sat out the recent round of elections. This will favor most democratic candidates across the nation. And if its Mama Grizzly on the top of the ticket it will be the greatest drubbing of a republican since Goldwater in 64. Which is why if my state has a presidential primary in 2012 I will both vote for Sarah and put up a lawn sign for her in my yard.

 

[cpwill]

yeah, that's what Carter supporters said about Reagan, too .

 

[haymarket]

Really?!?! I was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1972 and active in the party through the Carter campaign. I don't recall that at all.

 

[TurtleDude]

The big increase in turnout in 2012 will be from Democrats and those who elected Obama last time but sat out the recent round of elections. This will favor most democratic candidates across the nation. And if its Mama Grizzly on the top of the ticket it will be the greatest drubbing of a republican since Goldwater in 64. Which is why if my state has a presidential primary in 2012 I will both vote for Sarah and put up a lawn sign for her in my yard.

no one who understands reality thinks Palin is going to be the GOP nominee for president

 

[haymarket]

Well then tells us, as you understand reality - who will be?

 

[cpwill]

Olympia Snowe Is Getting a Challenger — And Soon

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. PPP added:

Moderate Republicans love Snowe. They give her a 70% approval rating and a strong majority say they’d vote to nominate her for another term. But those folks make up only 30% of the GOP electorate in Maine. It’s now dominated by conservatives and they’re particularly negative toward her, giving her just a 26% approval rating and saying by a 78-15 margin they’d like to trade her out for someone to the right.​

And it sounds like Mainers are going to get that opportunity.