>>Our political system sucks at the moment, both sides guilty. My favorite politician ever was Olympia Snowe, a Republican, who was killed from within her own party. My father knew her and contributed to her campaigns. She declined to run for reelection, a slam dunk, because she didn't recognize her party any more. She said as much in her goodbye speech. When politicians like Olympia Snowe are driven out of the political process there is a problem.
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>She was republican in name only. She was more liberal and sided with the dems almost on every vote.
Except, of course, it's not true. From National Journal (which is neither liberal nor conservative):
http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-vote-ratings/how-liberal-is-your-senator-2012-vote-ratings-20130221Snowe comes in 43rd most conservative, which isn't even the most "liberal" of the Republicans. Overall conservative score for her is 57. (Any score over 50 means voted on the conservative side more than half the time.)
Go back to 2010 ratings and again, she's not the least conservative Republican:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/2010-vote-ratings-senate-20110225That time, her conservative score was 63.3.
It's actually very bad for our country that there's now a divide between parties on these scores. Used to be that the middle part of the rankings had overlap, and things got done.
Tamar
