So do you see GOP leaders begin to kiss Collins' and Snowe's asses to keep them in line?

[WI_DEM]

I don't. The GOP is so far to the right now that they probably wouldn't care if they left the party either. Then they would be purged of all the "lefty" republicans and they can have one pure hard right clambake.

[LakeSamish706]

1. Yep, except that the Republican party appears to be in jeopardy of extinction at this point. n/t

[AndyA]

8. And that's a bad thing?

I say, let them go. Everyone knows the GOP doesn't care about endangered species, now let them see first hand what it feels like.

[LakeSamish706]

11. Not a bad thing from where I sit for sure.... The sooner they implode the better....

Those F***wads are off the wall...

[thereismore]

2. You don't know what is going on there. Let's not make hasty conclusions. nt

[WI_DEM]

5. So will the GOP begin to moderate there positions to keep Collins and Snowe happy?

[MineralMan]

3. Well, the wacko wingers are busy calling for a purge of

RINOS right now. They still think that if they assemble a bunch of like-minded reactionary morons they can retake the Congress.

[lazyriver]

7. Every winger I know strongly believes they lost the WH

and Congress because their party is not right wing enough. It seems this sentiment persists throughout their base. I hope it's true because it will doom the hard right to irrelevance for at least a generation.

[MineralMan]

9. YOWSA! May it happen as you say...

[county worker]

4. No, they have only one base and that is the far right wing nut crowd.

They are in a real bind. They have 21% of the voters identifying themselves as republican and that is the far right fringe element. They have to shed the far right in order to rebuild but to shed the far right is to go completely to 0% and then to build on that.

[Davis_X_Machina]

6. Both are R to stay. No one's going anywhere.

Especially Collins, what with a 30 point margin, and not up again till 2014. She's goin' nowhere. In fact, she sees herself as part of the way back for the national GOP. It's a Nixon-goes-to-China argument - that was the point of her stimulus grandstanding -- a push to portray Collins as:

- "Moderate", when her party isn’t.
- Northern, when her party is Southern.
- A woman in a party of pasty white dudes.
- Proven ability to pull Democratic votes -- ask Tom Allen.

She's sane, sensible, boring -- and very, very ambitious. She's the anti-Palin, or the antidote to Palin.

Snowe is the state party, personified.

The national party needs them -- they're rare proof that the GOP is not irretrievably nuts -- far more than they need the RNC.

[Xolodno]

10. They will probably be pushed out as well.

There's no Ronald Reagan to....

Oh wait, this just in....Reagan just switched back to a Democrat as well...

[Catshrink]

12. I could see the RW circling the wagons

and casting out the infidels who don't tow the line in a quest for ideological purity. They're losing, they know they're losing, and will want to make a last stand.