Olympia Snowe Doesn't Represent Anyone Except A Small Bunch Of Out Of Touch Republicans In Maine-- And The Insurance Industry

She hasn't taken quite as much as Maine's other Republican senator, Susan Collins, but Olympia Snowe has accepted $416,490 from the Insurance Industry. They didn't give her that much money because they like her hairstyle, her perfect attendance record or even her faux-centrist ability to help get some of the worst judges in the history of America-- like Priscilla Owens, William Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown-- confirmed by the Senate. Oh, no, no, no; like the lobbyists and CEOs from the Medical Industrial Complex, who have doled out $760,440 in campaign "donations," they were paying protection money so that Snowe would use her much ballyhooed reputation as a "moderate," an "independent," and a "centrist" to thwart the will of the American people-- not to mention the will of her very own constituents back in Maine. If knee jerk obstructionists, extremists and dittoheads like Jon Kyl, the two nutcases from Oklahoma, Jim DeMint, David Vitter and the KKK's Jeff Sessions start whining about some atrocity they claim Obama is perpetrating, most Americans just role their eyes and assume Obama is doing something that will benefit ordinary working people and their families.

Sixteen knee-jerk obstructionists in the Senate have ProgressivePunch scores of zero when it comes to substantive votes during the time Obama has been president. "Zero" means they have voted against every single proposal. Just so you can have it in way of contrast, the sixteen miscreants are:

John McCain (R-AZ)
Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Richard Burr (R-NC)
Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Tom Coburn (R-OK)
Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
Jeff Sessions (KKK-AL)
Jim Risch (R-ID)
Mike Crapo (R-ID)
Pat Roberts (R-KS)
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
John Barrasso (R-WY)
Mike Enzi (R-WY)
Jim Bunning (R-KY)
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
George LeMieux (R-FL)

Snowe, on the other hand, has a score of 25. Inside the Beltway, that entitles her to a virtual co-presidency with Obama, where nothing moves unless she agrees. Snowe campaigned hard last year for her close friend and ally John McCain. Mainers listened politely... and gave him 40% of the vote. This year she's as vehemently opposed to the public option as any of the zeros listed above. But only 29% of Mainers agree with her. And as for the Snowe Trigger, which would literally be responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, only 24% of Mainers agree with that garbage bill Obama seems on the verge of embracing to give his health care reform bill the absurd patina of bipartisanship, as though that DC game-playing had anything whatsoever to do with the real lives of real people. Take a look at this ad that the PCCC is running in Maine and consider signing their petition to Obama