How do the two Republican senators from Maine, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins put up with their GOP Senate Colleagues? Note that neither of these women were on the 31 'nay' list of GOP senators voting against HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. They also did not vote against the Stimulus Package, again standing nearly alone in their party.
Thirty-one of their GOP colleagues, 29 of them men, voted 'Nay' on 'religious' grounds, not unlike the Muslim fundamentalists, to block the governor of Kansas from her position on HHS. One wonders if these 29 men also suffer from misogyny and believe that a woman's place in in the kitchen. Clearly Louisiana's David Vitter has issues with women, just ask his embarrassed wife about call-girls.
During the past 24 hours, there has been much political banter swirling round Arlen Specter's bolt from the GOP. Many pundits look at today's GOP and shake their heads in disbelief that it has become a party of malcontents who are driven by ideology and power.
Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe represent a moderate political position on the spectrum and seem to be philosophically in a category of their own, far to the left of this group of Republican senators. Luckily they have each other to hug and cry with.
Surely they are intelligent women and understand that their continuing affiliation with the party will have zero impact in attempting to ameliorate the party, moving the GOP to a more center-right ideology. They are what the artless Donald Rumsfled termed, 'dead-enders.' Do they go down with the ship or do they stay, hoping to open the door to let light and fresh air into the dungeon?
It's their call, but the handwriting is on the cave walls.
