If only Snowe’s actions met her misplaced rhetoric

[ProSense]

If only Snowe’s actions met her misplaced rhetoric

By Steve Benen

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner talked to the Senate Small Business Committee, urging its members to approve jobs measures proposed by the White House. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), ostensibly Congress’ most moderate Republican and the member most likely to listen to reason, went on quite a tirade.

“Your primary mission is to craft the economic policy of this country, and at this point, it simply isn’t working,” she told Geithner. “Something’s gone terribly wrong, and what I hear over and over again is that there is no tempo, a tempo of urgency.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking to…but you need to talk to the average person,” she said later in a testy back and forth with Geithner. “Rome is burning.”

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We are, after all, talking about the alleged moderate from Maine who, just last week, voted with right-wing senators to refuse a debate on the popular and effective American Jobs Act. She’s the same senator who’s refused to endorse any of the provisions in the bill, no matter how much they’d help. What was that she was saying about “urgency”?

<...>

“Rome is burning”? And who, exactly, does Snowe believe is responsible? The party with good economic ideas that can’t overcome Republican obstructionism, or the party engaged in the obstructionist tactics, offering ideas that would make the economy worse, and by some accounts, holding back the nation deliberately?

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And now she’s complaining? Why, because her party is getting what it wants and she doesn’t like the results?

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[Proud Liberal Dem]

1. Republicans in Congress are clearly going to just sit on their hands and not do anything

while trying to affix the blame for all of our economic woes on the Obama Administration and it's policies (i.e. Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank, Timothy Geithner). :puke:

[BeyondGeography]

2. Snowe Job...what a joke

Didn't we waste a month in 2009 trying to get her vote for the stimulus? All she has done is crap on Obama's head for three years. And she'll still get primaried. Fool.

[karynnj]

6. She voted for the stimulus - along with Collins and Specter

You are thinking of the health care bill - where she did vote yes to get it out of committee, saying she did not want to be on teh wrong side of history - but she, like every Republican - filibustered it on the Senate floor.

[BeyondGeography]

7. Thanks for clarifying, but the point is she wasn't worth it

[DJ13]

3. She's been a severe disappointment since Obama was sworn in

I could see most every moderate, compromising position Obama has taken in office being drawn up specifically to appeal to someone with Snowe's past voting record, but she is so scared of the hard liners in her party she follows their lead like a puppy.

[Tarheel_Dem]

4. I'll just quote you from another thread.

"The Republican Party is filled with hypocrites supported by morons."

:kick:

[Mimosa]

5. Snowe projects a moderate image but votes with the CONS.

Sounds like a phony. ;)