Maine Senator Olympia Snowe – and her colleague Senator Susan Collins – are often held up as the prime examples of GOP lawmakers who are “Republican In Name Only”, or RINOs. They certainly aren’t alone – this ridiculous label is assigned to any Republican who steps outside of Republican orthodoxy on basically any issue at all – but they tend to be the most cited poster children of RINO-ism.

Snowe’s defection from the GOP position today on the Baucus healthcare legislation only further solidifies that opinion among conservatives.

But, like much conventional wisdom – those who kick and scream about Snowe’s RINOism have a very superficial view of both her, and politics in general.  These people view pragmatism as the enemy of principle, and in so doing scoff at Maine’s senior Senator and everything she represents.

Snowe’s conservative critics subscribe to the belief – like Republican hero Jim DeMint – that it would be better to have 30 pure conservatives united in a single view on the issues, than possess a majority forged out of moderation, centrism and compromise.  Were politics a war, these would be the people that would rather “go down fighting” against impossible odds, than potentially work for a negotiated peace.

While that is a romantic idea forged mostly in stories of great heroism – in practical reality such rigid partisanship ends up greatly hurting your ability to move the country toward your political viewpoint.  Spending all this time outraged about Olympia Snowe betraying the conservative movement really misses the point.

For example – the American left did not move this country from a pure laissez-faire economic system to the increasingly state-centric, quasi-socialistic economic system we see today by relying on a minority of extremists.  They have understood for at least the last eighty years, that politics is about moving the needle, and to move that needle you build coalitions that can put the wind at your back and creep the country toward your point of view.  As time goes by, more momentum is built and the nation is reshaped in the general image you want.

Republicans, especially in the last decade, have become hardened ideological purists.  They see Republican lawmakers voting for bailouts and budget deficits, and earmarks, and outraged they scream bloody murder.  They do not think tactically, nor pragmatically about coalitions, the use of moderates and what might be replacing those squishy conservatives were they to lose.  Indeed, many of the people the crucify are in actuality the exact kind of people that they need on their side, and many of the people they love are quite a bit less ideologically pure than they think.

Which brings me to Senator Snowe.  She has been labeled a RINO ever since voting against the conviction of President Clinton during the impeachment saga in the late 1990s.  Prior to that event, she was just a typical Yankee Republican – afterward, she had betrayed the party, and was akin to Benedict Arnold.

There is no question she is much more liberal than the Republican caucus as a whole.  Its not even close – we all know it.  She is pro-choice, she attempted to blunt Bush’s tax cuts, she voted for the stimulus, and now she’s working on passing healthcare.  There are dozens of other examples, but suffice it to say, conservatives are not wrong to label her as out of their ideological camp on a number of issues.  But they miss several things that make Snowe quite a bit more important and useful to conservatives.

Pragmatism vs. Stubborn Obfuscation

There are a few things we knew as of the election of Barack Obama. One of those things was that the new President and his supermajority Democratic alliance in Congress were going to be able to impose their will over the lawmaking process for at least the next two years.  This was unquestioned.  Yes, Republicans could filibuster certain things if they wanted to, but even that can only go so far, and it was clear that an ambitious, leftist agenda was going to be implemented, no matter how hard Republicans fought against it.

Upon realizing this, Republicans could choose one of two paths.  They could either oppose everything the Democrats wanted to do out of principle, or insert themselves into the compromise discussions, and attempt to mitigate the damage, moderating and blunting the sharp edges of that legislation as much as possible.  Most Republicans chose the former – Snowe, and to some degree Collins, have chosen the latter.

It has become chic to “stand on principle”, making a show of opposition to the president and his party.  Much of this is not only good for the GOP, it is also important and necessary to delineate the differences between the parties.  But at some point, all that “standing on principle” will also come back to haunt you.

Without any compromise, for example, President Obama’s stimulus package would have been roughly 900 billion dollars, rather than the 787 billion it ended up costing – and that was with only two Republicans in the Senate forcing the pricetag down.

Without Snowe’s efforts on this healthcare legislation, for example, it seems likely the Democrats would have tried the reconciliation route, and forced a “robust public option” on the American people, with a price tag of over a trillion dollars.  As it is, with only her efforts, the public option has been cut out of the Baucus bill, and the price tag is in the mid-800 billion dollar range.  Indeed, her willingness to vote for the Baucus bill has guaranteed her a seat at the conference negotiations, and perhaps single handedly prevented the Democrats from choosing reconciliation – something that will dramatically moderate the bill.

I could go on – but the point is obvious.  Without compromise minded moderates like Olympia Snowe, the “radical left-wing agenda” would be a great deal more partisan, and a great deal more damaging to the country if you believe in a conservative worldview.  That desire for pragmatic action rather than pure ideological opposition has taken horrible bills, and made them quite a bit less horrible.

Yes, putting GOP fingerprints on horrible bills isn’t exactly the most pleasant idea in the world, but in the end, if you think 787 billion dollars in one year is bankrupting the country, then 900 billion would have really bankrupted the country, and it would have happened whether you like it or not.  Snowe would prefer to have a hand in moving the needle – even a little – toward a more conservative approach.  Scoff all you want, that is an important thing.  Until Republicans can mount a resurgence, this is an extremely important role that needs to be filled, or the “radical leftist agenda” will be implemented all the faster, and all the more aggressively.

Common Sense

The last time the conservative base was this angry at Olympia Snowe, she was attempting to moderate President Bush’s massive tax cut in 2003.  At the time, she cited concerns about the potential explosion of budget deficits resulting from the structure and size of the package.  She worried that the tax cuts, with now significant government restructuring and cost savings, would lead to an irresponsible debt load.

Funny that this is exactly what happened, and that conservative anger over Congressional irresponsibility regarding the budget had a lot to do with the GOP losing control of Congress in 2006.

Now, I’m a libertarian – so I not only favored the tax cuts, but I believe they should have gone further.  However, I had no faith in the government to reform entitlements or curb spending at all, which would of course raise the deficit.  So in that respect I agree with Olympia Snowe, and would have considered voting against the legislation until I got the impression that the Bush Administration was serious about cutting spending and restructuring government.  Her concern came true – and a conservative shouldn’t really be upset with that.  Right now, I think we all wish Congress had a few more deficit hawks around in the past decade.

There has been a serious lack of common sense in the Republican party, especially relating to spending and taxes – and I find it ironic that people like Olympia Snowe and John McCain are routinely skewered by angry conservative activists, when they are perhaps some of the only sane voices on the subject.  If the administration wasn’t serious about curbing spending, the tax cuts should have been smaller.  If they wanted them that large, they should have provided savings.  Simple as that.

Value Over Replacement Player (VORP)

This is perhaps the most important point.  For any of you who love baseball, you may have heard of the sabermetric statistic “VORP” – short for Value Over Replacement Player.  In short, the statistic measures how much more value and production a baseball player has over a typical player who would hypothetically replace them.

For critics of Snowe, this is the point that must be looked at the most closely, because the “typical player” in Maine would likely be a Democrat, and probably one in the mold of Chellie Pingree.

If you dislike her so much, consider what you would have seen in the last ten months were a replacement level Democrat to have occupied her Senate seat.  For example, lets just take a look at who her last few opponents have been:

• 1994 – Tom Andrews.
• 2000 – Mark Lawrence
• 2006 – Jean Hay Bright

For those of you unfamiliar with these three, let me just say this.  I attended multiple debates between Snowe and Lawrence in 2000, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Lawrence was an unapologetic, hard left Democrat in the Nancy Pelosi mold, and would have enthusiastically supported a stimulus package twice as large as the one we ended up with, and would be pressuring the White House to include a public option.

In other words, rather than having a moderate Republican attempting to take some of the sharpest edges off of Democratic proposals, we would have had a Senator who was pushing in the OTHER direction, working to make legislation more radical, and more hard left.

Could Snowe succeed in Maine if she were a little more conservative?  Of course.  Could other Republicans who have sharper conservative teeth win statewide – yes.  But, the point remains that in the last decade or two, there have been no significant Republicans of consequence that would have held this seat for the GOP, and had Snowe not been there, we’d have a radical leftist in Washington right now.

That may leave a sour taste in your mouth, akin to voting for the lesser of two evils – but lawmakers such as Snowe are a necessity, especially for a party as drastically marginalized as the Republican Party.

Conclusions

Olympia Snowe recently decried the fact that her “party has changed“, and no longer values people of her political point of view – something she believes has contributed to the virtual death of the party.

If the Republican Party wishes to ever be relevant again – if they ever want to start moving the needle in the direction of a more conservative government that relies less on government intrusion into the lives of American citizens, it has to stop spending so much time and energy destroying people like Olympia Snowe.

Instead, it needs to work tirelessly to elect the most conservative people it can, and then forge a governing coalition around those they are able to elect.  Ideological purity is important and should be strived for, but that doesn’t mean lawmakers who step out of bounds, and do so in an attempt to forge something positive out of something that could have otherwise been entirely negative, should be ostracized.

There was a time I loathed what Olympia Snowe stood for.  As I’ve seen pragmatism die from my party, I have learned that politics is much deeper than my somewhat simplistic view – and that for better or worse, Senator Snowe’s presence in the Republican Party is actually a good thing.

I won’t be the most popular Republican for suggesting as much – but in the end, it is the truth.

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