Olympia Snowe throwing her party under the bus.

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25. Well, I don't care! Too damn bad. They oughta get some backbone up when they KNOW

FULL WELL what the truly and genuinely "right" thing is and should be, to do for their country.

Just imagine - what if. What if - there were truly noble and sensible "moderate republi-CONS" (although that seems an oxymoron to me by now) stepped up, en masse, in a united front, and stared down the teabaggers and the norquists and the rest of the vermin? Defied the limbaughs and becks and other assorted assholes? What if they went shoulder-to-shoulder, lockstep, together, in active and forceful resistance to the teabagger movement? What if they went on Pox Noise and told the truth? Yeah, they wouldn't get invited back, but so what? There are other media. There are other ways. There are other means. They could hold news conferences. They could issue public statements. They could blog. They could tweet. They could start special Facebook pages and more. Hell, they could start their OWN movement. And it might have made a difference.

I think part of the reason the teabaggers succeeded was that there WAS no pushback, back in the beginning when it could really have swatted them down. There was a vacuum and they rushed in to fill it. There was NOTHING standing in the way or shouting back or denouncing anything they did. They were allowed to have their way. And look at what happened! Look how much more fucked-up we are now.

People like Olympia Snowe had a very special and unique responsibility to speak out, to be their party's conscience, and to keep it on track, in touch with its better self - NOT its baser self. She was uniquely positioned on the inside. She would have had more allies by the day until she had an army behind her. Facing down an army that's like a solid concrete block wall is a lot harder for a group of renegade jerks throwing teabags around than if they were facing a whole lot of walls with a whole lot of front doors left ajar.

If there had been some substantial resistance from within the GOP, led by somewhat more reasonable and realistic people such as Olympia Snowe professes to be, it's possible the teabag movement might not have gotten off the ground, or at least not as far off the ground as they have. It's like a cancer. If you go at it with firepower the instant you detect it, your chances of eradicating it are very strong. If you just kinda hang back and let nature take its course and figure it'll be alright, then your loved ones will be talking to undertakers, and MUCH sooner than later.