After the House passage of the HC bill and the Senate bucks it, I thought it a good time to revisit this post. It appears that Snowe is not only sticking to her guns but that she is also representing her constituents’ desires to the letter.

For her decision to let the bill come out of committee, she has been branded (again!) a RINO by nasty bloggers, Limbaugh, Beck and several others. Yet, a funny thing happened on the road to passage- she says NO (at the time of this writing) to the public option asit is written. The Democrats are annoyed, and their “screamers” point to Maine polls that say most support both the public option and government regulation on health care providers, and say she’s ignoring her voters.

I examined the polls, and came to the opposite conclusion. These polls say that the Maine voters would support a public option FOR ALL, similar to Medicare. You have smartly pointed out that the option on the table is anything but that. It appears that Snowe is not only sticking to her guns but that she is also representing her constituents’ desires to the letter.

Good post. I happen to adore Olymipia Snowe, not for her Conservative or Liberal leanings (nor because she’s a fellow Greek ) but because she seems to be one politician who actually thinks about positions and their implications on both her constituency and the country as a whole. I also think she’s almost alone in understanding that steps 1 and 2 can be taken without guaranteeing steps 3 and 4. She’s a great thinker and rarely falls into the rhetorical panic of “slippery slope” that so often grips her party and prevents reasonable action. All that said and in the end, I think it just doesn’t matter what anybody but her constituency thinks of her actions, as they are the ones who elect her. She’s been reelected by landslides even when she has voted against her party.

As for the nasty tone of political debate…I think we all know that both the left and the right each have their salespeople who will grasp and broadcast the most extreme views. Schultz, Olbermann, Maddow and Rhoades etc. are just as extreme “cheerleaders” for the left as Limbaugh and Co.are for the right. These people are entertainers, fighting for ratings-pure and simple. The larger problem, however, results when the polticians themselves start acting like these folks. An example, of course, were the ridiculous and erroneous “death panel” assertions by Grassley and other elected officials. We expect the Salespeople of the Apocolypse (right or left, your choice) to showcase entertaining, yet baseless “facts” as a way of garnering an audience. It is irresponsible and completely unproductive, though, for our politicians to follow suit.

I think you know how I feel about our current crop of conservative talking heads. I have no use for any of them, despite the fact that they may slip up and actually say something good once in a while. I apply that assessment to Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Coulter, and all the rest.

Your example of the first energy crisis 30 years ago is a good one. I can remember some of that myself, as I was 17 years old at the time and it was pretty bad. You would have thought that would have galvanized our government into making some decisions and getting things done, but it didn’t. You and I have discussed the gasoline tax before (I believe that was when you first started commenting on the blog) and we generally do not see eye to eye on that, but I can’t help but wonder how different it would have been had they did what had to be done and fixed the problem when it first became a problem.

But, and it’s a big but, my basic premise is that the country’s underlying economy is the mother of all Ponzi schemes and in 30-50 years it will come crashing down on the heads of my children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. One of the reasons we are all comfortable with the ways things are is that we’ve borrowed up to our eyeballs to keep the economic engine running. We should have taxed gasoline a dollar a gallon 30 years ago after the first energy crisis both to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and to provide the funds necessary to maintain and build our infrastrcuture of roads, bridges, high speed rail, etc. Instead, we have bridges and roads collapsing around us and it will continue to get worse. We needs hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars just for infrastructure. We have massive unfunded mandates in social security, Medicare, and Medicaid created at a time when our life expectancy was much shorter….trillions of dollars of future payments that are supposed to be paid in by the next generation — but the next generation is a whole lot smaller and we’re going to go broke if we don’t address these issues now. There’s more and I should probably do a seperate post but these are the big decisions I’m talking about that absolutely demand to be addressed — and the answers will not be pretty because we’ve been living on Fantasy Island.

Mike is correct when he says there have been far too many tough decisions that should have been made long ago. Our political leaders, both Democrat and Republican, have had a bad habit of putting these decisions just far enough into the future that they do not have to be the ones to deal with them. It makes for an easier reelection bid for them all, much easier than it would be if they actually made some of these tough decisions.

One thing I do want to address is the point about angry conservatives leading the Republican Party down the road. Yes, there are a lot of conservatives who have said some very extreme things about President Obama, but there were a lot of liberals who had a lot over very extreme things to say about George W. Bush as well. In my opinion, neither side of the political spectrum have learned to play nice with the other side.

There are some very fundamental differences between conservatives and liberals and there are some very fundamental reasons why we do not like some of the policies of President Obama. I can’t say for certain what the end result of those policies will be, but I am afraid he is leading our country down a road that is far removed from what our founding fathers intended. I can’t help but wonder where it will end up.