Olympia Snowe Should Have Voted For The Affordable Care Act

After all, failure to do so doesn’t seem to have endeared her to Maine conservatives:
It’s been clear for a long time now that Maine Republicans want to swap out Olympia Snowe for someone more conservative. Our newest poll in the state finds that hasn’t changed: only 33% of primary voters in the state say they would support Snowe next year to 58% who prefer a generic ‘more conservative candidate.’
The gripe with Snowe is pretty straight forward. 58% of primary voters think she’s too liberal to 37% who think she’s ideologically where she should be. Most GOP voters don’t really think Snowe belongs in their party- 34% think she ought to be an independent, 33% think she should be a Democrat, and only 27% feel that the GOP is indeed her rightful place.
A “yes” vote would have positioned her for a timely party switch, or a move to become an independent and hope the Democrats don’t mount a serious candidate against her. But as things stand, she’s mired in a kind of no-man’s land—she voted, in committee, for a tyrannical individual health care mandate but at the end of the day she stood against Barack Obama’s signature initiative. What’s keeping her alive right now is there’s no really solid conservative candidate in the field against her, but that may not be enough and it may not hold up.