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Go Home Olympia Snowe Is On The Clock

JONATHAN CHAIT NOVEMBER 12, 2010

Olympia Snowe Is On The Clock

BY JONATHAN CHAIT

Looks like Olympia Snowe is getting a right-wing primary challenger in Maine:

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.

Things can change in two years, but the way the Republican Party is currently operating, primary challenges like this are nearly impossible to defeat. Christine O-Donnell won, and she was pretty obviously a totally underqualified borderline nutcase. Maine looks like a prime pick-up opportunity for Democrats in 2012. If I'm Snowe, I'm figuring my best chance to retain the seat is not to try to lurch to the right -- which hasn't worked for anybody; these activists have long memories -- but to make a plan to hold the seat as an independent or Democrat. The chances of surviving that way are way higher than the chances of making it through a Republican primary. Snowe could always try to run to the right between now and 2012, and then bolt from the party if she loses (or faces the certain prospect of losing) the primary. But then she looks opportunistic and probably just loses to a Democrat in the general election.

Of course, that's just fine by me. I don't especially care for Snowe. But at Jonathan Chait, our policy is to hand out free political advice to everybody regardless of party or ideology.

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11 comments

Forget independent. How'd that work for Charlie Crist? Clearly the only survival mechanism available to Republican enemies of Sarah Palin and the tea party is the write-in.

- timteeter

November 12, 2010 at 12:06pm

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BTW, a prize to the first person to take a picture of the ostraka used to condemn, say, Themistocles and photoshop it to have Snowe's name on them. Oh, and if I have to explain the joke, then it's just not funny.

- timteeter

November 12, 2010 at 12:09pm

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There ya go agin, Tim, showin' off that thar edjumacashun. When ya gonna larn that we needs our funnies whar some librul gits hurt. Dang elitist.

- dirque

November 12, 2010 at 1:01pm

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All states won't necessarily replicate Florida.

- liberal reformer

November 12, 2010 at 1:02pm

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There's a big difference with Crist: sore loserdom. He ran in the GOP primary and wouldn't accept the result. And Murkowski is a counter-example (though it took a real loon of a tea party candidate to propel her to seeming/possible victory). Snowe would be running as an independent from the outset.

- Lymon1

November 12, 2010 at 2:04pm

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timteeter: You didn't say it had to be a good Photoshop job, right? I'm a classicist who is procrastinating grading essays, so here you go: http://i53.tinypic.com/34ht6ie.jpg

- frippo

November 12, 2010 at 3:28pm

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I don't think she'll cross over to the Democrats-- Arlen Specter's example is too fresh in mind. Her best chance is to hope that the Tea Party thing dies out, and count on traditional Maine Yankee independence to squeak out the primary. BTW, are primaries in Maine open or only registered Republicans?

- stanalama

November 12, 2010 at 3:44pm

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I agree with most of this except I can think of one senator that lurched right and survived- old man mccain. But I think her odds are better as a dem. I bet the dems in maine like snowe better than the dems in penn liked specter

- tysonsahib

November 12, 2010 at 4:07pm

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Maine has closed primaries.

- rhubarbs

November 12, 2010 at 4:10pm

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Frippo, Brilliant! Olympia the Snowy! I think you should copyright this and then sell it to Chait.

- timteeter

November 12, 2010 at 4:24pm

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Frippo, that's good. I had to actually remember the Greek I was forced to take for several years growing up (yes, the daughter griping about having to go to Greek school at the end of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was reality for me for 6 long miserable years).

- tnmats

November 12, 2010 at 5:45pm

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