The mainstream press invariably call Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe Republican "moderates."
One wonders what kind of yardstick they are using. Are they in the Jacob Javits-Lowell Weicker league? Not by a long shot.
No one ever called Robert A. Taft a moderate, but a good argument could be made that Mr. Republican of the 1940s and 1950s had more compassion than these two ladies.
They break ranks from their extremist colleagues just often enough to fool the voters of Maine into thinking they are not completely under the sway of Mitch McConnell and the Hard Right.
The mainstream press did a poor job reporting on the final passage of $26 billion in assistance to small businesses. These so-called "moderates" finally consented to vote for it after they forced Harry Reid to cut $12 billion from food stamps. The measure has yet to become law.
In other words, the two ladies, known as "the twins" were only willing to help small business if the Democrats would agree to remove a great deal of food from the tables of the poor and down and out.
That is what we call moderate these days!!!
The mainstream press did not report this, and it has done a terrible job reporting on matters concerning small business.
For months Republicans have blocked assistance to small business---all the while praising the small businessman to the high heavens.
What assistance there was for small business has been thwarted by Republican appointees in the SBA who philosophically opposed administration policy. The Bush administration cemented partisan appointees into top civil service jobs across the board, and Obama is now having trouble implementing his policies.
Republicans demand that we borrow another $2.3 trillion or more to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich another decade. Republicans do not oppose deficits when they are incurred to benefit the rich.
It also seems that mainstream media types are ignorant of what they should hav e learned in finance or accouting classes. Republicans claim that without the tax cut, small businessmen could not invest in their businesses.
This assumes that most small businessmen take in $250,000 a year. There is no proof this is true.
It also ignores the fact that the small businessman decides how much to take out of his company as personal compensation. She or he can take less that a quarter million and reinvest more in the company, thus eventually increasing his wealth still more.
We hear all this about small business, but few note that potential Speaker John Boehner is busy trying to get another tax break for people who export jobs.
Nor do we hear that Republicans, with the help of some conservative Democrats, again turned back efforts to repeal legislation that rewards people for exporting jobs. This legislation has been failing for decades, since Gerald Ford cast his first veto to sink the Hartke Bill.
At bottom, there is little difference between Snowe/Copllins and Jim DeMindt. The two ladies have to occasionally appease moderate voters, but they have as little compassion as the South CArolina senator. At root, they and their entire party, embrace Social Darwinism as their basic philosophy. They misapply natural selection to society and conclude that those at the bottom belong there.
At the root of European fascism in the 1930s was Social Darawinism.
Today only Republicans from very conservative states and members of their Tea Bag wing are honest about this belief. It is also likely that Social Darwinism is at the root of the xenophobia and racism we find in anti-immigrant rants, anti-Islamic hysteria, and assertions that Obama is an African-born Islamic socialist.
The fact is that the Republicans have become political extremists, but somehow this has won them massive support.