Or one of them, at least. Tarren Bragdon, president of the Maine Heritage Policy Center , has written recently of assurances he received from Sen. Snowe about the conditions of her support for a health care reform bill. On Townhall.com he recounted :
While the "moderate" label is often used by the far right to protest Senator Snowe's actions - the left is about to learn a very important lesson from the moderate from Maine.
It is not an act. It is not something Senator Snowe does to get re-elected or to curry favor. She believes that there is middle ground and she looks for it. For her, middle ground means giving businesses the opportunity to join together and purchase health care - regardless of state lines. It involves tort reform, it involves ensuring folks have a skin in the game (not "free" government health care) and it involves truly bending the cost curve. The bottom line is that Democrats in Congress, and this President, have failed to find the middle ground in the health care debate. In fact, they have veered so far off the center that they will find no sympathy - behind the scenes or not - from Senator Snowe or her other moderate colleagues.
Then after Snowe voted in favor of a failed amendment for the Baucus bill, she said in a press release :
“The American people are rightly entitled to see what we are legislating and we should not be afraid of having a better and more complete understanding of exactly what we are doing,” said Senator Snowe, one of six committee members who worked to lay the foundation for bipartisan cooperation within Congress on health care reform. “The fact is words matter and so do the numbers. This amendment represents a common sense, practical, pragmatic, good government approach to understanding the totality and the collective impact of what we do. We want to be sure that we are absolutely confident in the integrity of the product that we are going to be voting on in the final analysis.”
Let me translate that statement for the Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee. You are skating on Potomac River ice in the middle of a Snowe storm. It's not going to end well. When she uses words like "common sense" "practical" and "pragmatic" in the same sentence - you might want to consult with your Senate colleagues on the Right. They learned to speak Moderate in the previous Administration. The grimace on their faces -followed by a Cheshire cat smile- should be translation enough.
