Snowe: GOP Has Abandoned Principles; Specter Switch "Devastating"

Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of the few remaining moderate Republicans in the Senate, said Tuesday that Arlen Specter's abandonment of the GOP is "devastating," both "personally and I think for the party."

"I've always been deeply concerned about the views of the Republican Party nationally in terms of their exclusionary policies and views towards moderate Republicans," said Snowe, who has been approached, she said, by Democrats in the past about switching parties.

Specter's switch to the Democratic Party "underscores the blunt reality" that the GOP is not a welcome place for moderates, she said.

So far, she said, she's staying put. "I believe in the traditional tenets of the Republican Party: strong national defense, fiscal responsibility, individual opportunity. I haven't abandoned those principles that have been the essence of the Republican Party. I think the Republican Party has abandoned those principles.

She added that being a Republican is simply part of who she is. "It's my ethnic heritage, Spartan side, that continues to fight," she said.

Ryan Grim is the author of the forthcoming book This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America

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Comments

[cobraxus]

"I believe in the traditional tenets of the Republican Party: strong national defense, fiscal responsibility, individual opportunity. I haven't abandoned those principles that have been the essence of the Republican Party."
Well I'm a democrat and I believe in those things too.The problem is I don't consider pre-emptive war and unconditional support of Israel a strong national defense.I don't consider de-regulating the banking industry and cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans fiscal responsibility.And explain to me how individual opportunity is promoted by cutting support for education and politicizing(if not outright attacking)the sciences.Tradition and historical revisionism can only cover-up so much Senator.

[HHUA]

ditto...

[GlenRast]

National Defense?

Like invading a country that wasn't a threat to us while letting AQ and the Taliban off the hook?

Fiscal Responsibility?

The recent GOP presidents from Reagan to Dubya have run up the largest increases in debt in history during their administrations. Where is the factual fiscal responsibility?

Individual opportunity?

I wasn't aware the Democratic party opposed that. Frankly I'm surprised to hear this kind of BS come out of her mouth. She's quickly losing my respect.

[leftistssuck]

Reagan sent spending cuts to Congress to match his tax cuts and the Democrats pronounced them dead in arrival. Even big-spending Bush looks like a piker compared to the Obama spending plans, with nearly a $2 trillion deficit just this fiscal year alone. Bush broke the Republican brand on spending by spending like a Democrat, so it's odd indeed that Democrats would highlight his record to criticize it. Mr. Obama's spending and deficits are clearly unprecedented, so Democrats have no moral standing to criticize Republians on spending. Republicans are now the ones trying to stop the looting of the public treasury and restore some fiscal sanity.

[antifluff]

When repubs wanted Freddie and Fannie regulated/investigated, it was the dems that prevented it; those entities sold bad debt to the banks and started an avalanche.
Individual opportunity is not promoted by throwing money at a failing educational system that is being used as a nationwide political agenda, instead of teaching the three "Rs". Attacking the sciences is a liberal statement for asking someone to prove "theories", and the same 'experts' refusing to show evidence or present "other" theories.
If you were for individuals, you would support the disorganization of a national educational system that promised to bring up test scores and equalize the nation, but has only made millionaires out of top 'educational' administrators.
Strong national defense means the defense dep't is funded, not have funds taken away in a time when the USA is under political attack from ALL sides (At this point, blaming it on Bush is understood, even though attacks were happening BEFORE he became president), and instead using tax money to reward those that do not contribute to society and in some cases are very hard on society.
Fiscal responsibility????? All citizens should vote out politicians, cause there aren't any doin' this.
As for cutting taxes, how do you cut more taxes for those that don't pay them?? The wealthiest Americans are not in the INCOME tax system, they had ancestors that passed laws to shelter their wealth long ago.

[Chad53916]

"...strong national defense, fiscal responsibility, individual opportunity."

Is that it? What about God, gays and guns?! Ms. Snowe, you're going to be eaten alive by your party if don't watch your step. It's alright to be hopeful, but if too many moderates peel off...

[Puzes]

"I think the Republican Party has abandoned those principles. " She is right ... she just left off the next sentance: and has become the party of extreme right puppets who are controlled by greedy blowhards and rhetoric spewing puppet masters.

[leftistssuck]

I think you just described yourself, Puzes, except for the rightwing part. Now take your medication.

[golferman]

Your name describes you I would say. And no matter what any democrats says you are not buying it. Ignorance is bliss and yo u just proved it.

[HypocrisyAlarm]

Snowe and Collins should take the Bernie Sanders approach. Become independent.

They both stand in the center (or a bit more careful than center). Sanders votes center-left. Lieberman votes center-right.

With four independents in the Senate, the effectiveness of the filibuster might dimish, and listening to constituents wishes might become more important.

A senator from Wyoming directly represents LESS than HALF a million people. A senator from California represents almost THIRTY-FOUR million people. Why should the Wyoming's senator's vote have SIXTY-EIGHT times the INFLUENCE of the vote of the senator from California?

[beartrack]

Need to review your history. It was meant to give each state an equal vote. The House is where it is proportional.

[VinceTeeter]

OK, so if you haven't bothered to look, only 21 % of the American people identify with the party of:

Fear, Hate, Ignorance, and Greed.

There is no Republican party, there is only a bunch of hate mongering plutocrats and rednecks who want to drag this country down to the level of Latin America, with a super-rich class and a bunch of peons.

Its time to abolish the Republican party all together. There is plenty of room within the Democratic party for real, honest conservatives and patriotic libber-als. Let the remaining Republicans be renamed to Bigotrines, Plutocrates, or Dogma-idiots.

[antifluff]

Explain what the dems stand for, please.

[cminca]

How about liberty and justice for all--including gays and immigrants.

How about the rights of privacy. (Ever notice how republicans want a limited government, as long as it continues to monitor our bedrooms?)

How about getting big time religion out of the government? How about relying on science, instead of religion, for science education (evolution).

How about caring for the sick and weak, including those who became disabled due to service to our country. Remember--it was Saint Ronny who started closing VA hospitals.

How about caring for children AFTER their born, instead of just when they are non-viable clumps of cells?

Get a clue--the republicans don't practice what they preach....

[leftistssuck]

yea, right plenty of room in the Democratic Party for honest conservatives under Pelosi and Reid. The Democratic Party has just taken a dramatic shift to the left, and the moderates and centrists and even conservatives who voted for this guy will quickly wise up: Obama is no more "moderate" than the conservatives everyone here likes to bash.

You can talk all you want about the low ratings of the Republicans, but even today, Gallup shows generic Democrat and Republican congressional votes almost tied. The more Obama lies about everything from opposing gigantic deficits to fighting "lobbyists" to actually making energy and health care cheaper (give me a break), the more the moderate voters and the middle class will realize he's full of it.

[tsammani]

Republicans these days cannot stand criticism, which they tend to see as part of a vast socialist conspiracy. They are swimming in 50's style fear. If this continues, they may end up limiting their membership to cluelss hicks and lunatics, and it's a shame, because several principles of conservatism make sense if rationally applied, as Obama seems to be willing to do.

[pressseon]

I just read 'The Making of the President' about the 1960 election. In it Theodore H. White describes the Republican party as a combination of two things, high idealism and low, filthy, unbridled greed.
Idealism is nice, but we're not in Sparta anymore, Olympia.

[sempronia]

No, that sounds a lot like Sparta, post-Peloponnesian War, actually.

[thelonegunman]

since when has the GOP had "principles?"

[antifluff]

Check your modern history on when a repub is caught in a scandal: gone, vs dem caught in scandal: re-elected and touted as hero.

[OswegoKayaker]

I suppose you don't consider fabricating WMD as a scandal? All those dead soldiers and civilians. No, when they are Republican scandals they just fix the election so they get to be president and VP again. The scandal of no bid contracts (that cost our soldiers lives in poor quality goods and services) made Halliburton (Dick Cheney's company) very, very wealthy.

Halliburton contracts in 2000 -- $763 Million
Halliburton contracts in 2005 -- $6 BILLION

I guess this doesn't rate as a scandal? War for profit. Untold misery for profit. Torture, and everything else the last administration did with their ultra secret for-profit mercenaries like Blackwater.

[Jack Straw]

Scandal and gone like how,

Like Reagan and Iran-Contra? Ollie North sells weapons to Iran. What a true Patriot!

Like Reagan and the Savings and Loan scandal with a special appearance by Bush brother Neil?

Or did you have a different connotation of gone?

[Tyler-Durden]

how can this woman talk about fiscal responsibility after the performance of the last 8 years?

it never ceases to amaze me how repugs can say the exact opposite of what they do, over and over.

[theMightyT]

you misread what she said.

She personally believes in those things, and accuses the republican party of abandoning those principles.

[thedirtman]

Whenever the Republicans are in definite trouble the subject is always changed to abortion. The Republican motto ought to be:

Talk about the fetus, and they won't defeat us.

The issue is not as confusing as it seems. The role of the government is to provide order. The role of the church is to effuse ethics. Order and ethics are not exactly the same. Any Libertarian knows this, although Libertarians abdicate their own standards by consistently opposing Democrats.

A women might seek an abortion when trying to preserve order - that is, to maintain her work in order to provide for herself and her family. It should be the role of the church to oppose abortion, if that issue needs to be taken further. I say, if you want a strong church in your community, don't diminish the role of the church by substituting government in its place. It isn't fair to the church.

[Brian Deuel]

With the economy in shambles, joblessness at an all-time high, and a pandemic on its way, wedge issues are an absolutely useless tactic. The Right will continue to use them, though, which will help to accelerate their rapid decline to irrelevence.

When one is worrying about how to feed their family and keep them healthy, their issues on abortion and god in schools tends to take a back seat.

21%.

[antifluff]

Sounds like a statement from Castro, Chavez, Achmedijad (sp), Stalin, etc., they didn't believe in ethics either.

[thedirtman]

You seem to have forgotten your history. Stalin wasn't interested in setting the stage for churches to flourish. Stalin wasn't interested in increasing the role of church in society.

[OhComeOnNow]

C'mon, Olympia - take the plunge to the blue side. We will welcome you with open arms!

[Liberalforsure]

The rethuglicans say they want small gov yet want to tell you what to do with your bodies, whom to marry and will bail out a bank in a NY minute. They say they are pro life yet love war, hunting and the death penalty. They say they are Christian yet use fear, hate and exclusion to maintain their party.

[RyanMuadDib]

AMEN!!

[OswegoKayaker]

Exactly! Always seem to want to know what you are saying and thinking. They seem to have no trouble making the government bigger when it involves spying like the Department of Homeland Security -- which was the most expensive and biggest expanse of government I can remember. 2005 Discretionary Budget Authority: $33.8 billion. I remember the first year Tom Ridge used most of the money to decide which colors to use to tell us how alarmed we were supposed to be at that moment. I think it would have been a whole lot less money and wouldn't have needed a whole new layer of government to just tell the CIA, FBI, etc. to share information.

[hl7]

Well, at least they've been highly successful in making their own role in government smaller.

[huffy2001]

"I believe in the traditional tenets of the Republican Party: strong national defense, fiscal responsibility, individual opportunity. I haven't abandoned those principles that have been the essence of the Republican Party. I think the Republican Party has abandoned those principles."

Okay, what's wrong with this picture. The pugs stand for none of these things any more. They stand for stealing democracy, shredding individual rights, radical racism, guns, torture, creationism, global warming, and the destruction of this country and by extension, the world.

But she's standing firm? Time to throw them out and get some people who can smell the coffee.

[Henk]

Whoa, hold on there buddy. No reason to inject reality into this.

The Republican party has always been as it is today. In the past there were more of them like Ms. Snow who'd convinced themselves that Republicans stood for something more, so their "moderate" voices counter-balancing the wing-nuts, but today the TRUE Republicans have finally taken over and there are no more moderate voices, save Snow, who just can't seem to face reality.

So please, she is an old woman, stop with the reality stuff, it will only frighten her.

[ProudChristian]

Being republican and being christian are two different things. i personally am not pro-choice but that does not mean you deny other people the right to do whatever they want to their bodies!

[thedirtman]

Amen to that! A secular society provides the necessary order for houses of faith to grow and flourish. We don't need government and churches to become redundant institutions. The church is just fine the way it is.

[lcdbsez]

proud --

Ahhhhh, there's the rub (as Shakespeare would say) . . . the weepublican Party "geniuses" have been working very hard for a very long time to link being a weepublican with being a christian -- to the exclusion of anything else, so I must respectfully disagree with your first position.

Too bad your opinion (about abortion/birth control) is a minority amongst your fellow (so-called) christians . . . but, then, it makes sense . . . so, that would figure.

[Jimbo554]

Unfortunately for you, being a Republican does mean that you deny other people the right to do whatever they want to their bodies.

[Bianchi]

Proud Christain, I'm a Catholic, Yankee-Italian and life long (30+ year) Republican who bought a company and moved to the DEEP RED SOUTH over 20 years ago. Where I live, being a Christian and Republican are SYNONYMOUS..."YOU CAN"T BE ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER". There in lies the entire problem...the Christian Republicans want to legislate THEIR theological beliefs on ALL OF AMERICA...and there goes the Freedom of Choice you referenced too....and the Freedom of Religion by the simple fact the Christian Right GOP WILL NOT SUPPORT a Jew, or Morman for ANY ELECTED POLITICAL POSITION (Mitt Romney and Joe Lieberman). Proud Christian, your as rare a breed in the GOP, sorta like Specter, Snowe, Collins...and I used to be. I left the part 4 years ago when I opened my mind and stopped accepting/believing everything the GOP leaders told me and did my own research. When I left the GOP, local and state CHRISTIAN LEADERS (who control the GOP) cursed me and called me names. Where is the Christ Like Life with these people...IT DOES NOT EXIST ANYMORE.

[Bianchi]

After 30 yrs I came to realize THIS IS NOT THE REPUBLCIAN Party of my father, and it has changed drastically over the last 10 to 15 years for me. IT IS NOT THE Republican Party Senator Snowe once knew either. The GOP is filled with hate mongering, dishonesty, deceit...at the same time calls itself "'The Party of Christian America". I see NO CHRIST LIKE Actions on the part of any of GOP. Dr Don Wilton, pastor of the Spartanburg, First Baptist Church, Spartanburg, SC (then president of the SOuthern Baptist Convention) said on his INTERNATIONAL TV SHOW, "President George Bush is GOD'S MAN OF THE HOUR, and the Republican Party is the ONLY party for Christian American"...these people still beleive it too...and want to purify..purge...get rid of ANY ELECTED GOP offical who does not support their theological social beliefs and agenda Your on their list too Senator Snowe...watch out!

Former President Gerald Ford said, "When Betty and I attended the first GOP convention after I left office, we were so disappointed. The Christian Right were taking over and the party was headed in the wrong direction. We left the convention early knowing this movement would be the downfall of the Republican Party" HE WAS right. That is why over 200,000 in PA have re-registered as Democrats ...the party left them...it was hyjacked by the Southern Baptist, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and Pat Robinson. Watch out Senator Snowe

[sempronia]

I agree with you, and I would like to add that as much as I support the Democrats and, as a former Pennsylvania resident, rejoice at Specter's defection, I think that what is to be mourned is the loss of credible and reasonable opposition. By marginalizing moderates and gradually emphasizing and acting upon right-wing ideological extremes, the Republican party has killed any credibility.

Although this is not exactly related, I wanted to mention a telling episode that occurred just before the election: an acquaintance of mine, who is in the military technology industry, read an account of a meeting between prospective McCain officials and prospective Obama officials in a trade journal. The acquaintance, who had for some time considered supporting McCain because he respected McCain's record in the military and his policies towards it, found himself surprised: while the Obama camp had a thorough knowledge of the technology, the military, and what sorts of needs could be met, the McCain camp answered most of the questions based upon conservative ideology. For my acquaintance, this pretty much decided his vote.

[sempronia]

The point of this is that the Republican party has made the Democrats not just the party of not-Bush, but the party of reasonable arguments based upon logic. Right now, I'm not sure this is so much a problem because there are plenty of Democrats who are willing to disagree with the president, and certainly Specter, despite his move, will be free to express his disapproval if he sees the need; but I also believe that a democracy functions with more than one party, and that for voters who may not agree entirely with the Democrats but who are not completely right-wing ideologues, there aren't a lot of options.