In 2006, Snowe was listed by Time magazine as one of America's 10 best senators, in part for her ability to set aside partisanship. Which is funny because this year, Time magazine ran a hyper-adulatory story about the late Ted Kennedy, perhaps the most partisan force the Senate ever has known. Praise of bipartisanship, you see, is doled out selectively.
Now, as unlikely as it is, history also offers Republicans an unexpected opportunity to remake their party, to find an ideological center, to use politics to thwart a movement that is antithetical to every tenet they've been rhetorically peddling since Ronald Reagan.
Of course, Republicans will increasingly be accused of being ideologues. If only.
Is ideology something to be dismissed as a barrier to progress? Isn't ideology a framework of ideas that politicians should be using to inform their decisions?
Mavericks, well, they dismiss ideology because it would bind them to consistent and principled votes. John McCain often displays the muddled and mercurial thinking of a person with no political, intellectual or economic philosophy guiding him.
There is plenty of room for dissent in political parties. But when it comes to health care reform, Republicans -- powerless to stop meatloaf from being served in the Senate mess hall, much less a bill -- do have a chance to embrace the ideals they've been pretending to champion for a decade with one straightforward, graceful and honorable word: "no."
They have no moral or civic or political obligation to embrace bipartisanship. History might even be telling them not to.