DON’T BE BULLIED Dismantling the Olympia Snowe Myth
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ne of the main arguments employed by the Hatch campaign staff is that if their boss is not re-elected to his seventh term, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) will become chair of the influential Finance Committee. This is all couched in rhetoric that communicates fear and worry — after all, you don’t want Snowe raising taxes on us all, do you? After all, as Hatch’s campaign is quick to remind us, she voted to pass ObamaCare out of committee!85
In fact, the very idea that if Hatch loses Snowe will become Finance Committee chair is flawed. A larger and more conservative Senate Republican Caucus, likely in the majority, could confer the chairmanship to a different GOP Senator on the Finance Committee.
Perhaps it would be enlightening to examine the records of these two senior Senators to see if the argument has any merit. An online comparison tool at OpenCongress.org shows that since January 2007, Sens. Snowe and Hatch have voted the same way 71 percent of the time. That’s one overlapping Venn diagram! (See above.)86 However, that’s not the complete picture. It only goes back a few years, and it covers a ton of legislation that either was innocuous or an obvious vote. So, to dig deeper, one might review the 85. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/48647_Page2.html Hatch deliberately avoided using Snowe’s name, but made the argument that “They’re never going to get a better conservative handling that committee.”
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votes compiled at HatchRecord.com to see how each senator voted since 1995, when Sen. Snowe assumed office. For the 47 votes analyzed, the two Senators voted the same way 42 times, or 89.3 percent of the time. For the other four votes listed on HatchRecord.com, Senator Snowe voted the right way in opposition to Hatch. The list we’re talking about here is a record of some of Hatch’s anti-liberty, pro-Big Government votes in recent years. Thus, it cannot be said that Orrin Hatch is a fiscal saint when compared to Olympia Snowe. While they have their differences (and while some of Hatch’s better votes may have been voted on the other way by Snowe), the two are so similar as to render the campaign’s claim that Snowe is far to the left of Hatch patently absurd.87 To vote for Hatch in order to keep the chairmanship of the Finance Committee away from Olympia Snowe is like voting for Barack Obama to keep Hillary Clinton from getting the Democratic presidential nomination. Politically speaking, they are virtually identical twins; so fighting for one over the other is largely a moot point. Whether a politician’s voting record supports Big Government 90 percent of the time or “only” 70 percent, it’s still too much. So, whether Utah keeps Hatch in office and he gets the chairmanship, or whether Utah denies him his seventh six-year term in office and Senator Snowe gets the chairmanship (assuming she is re-elected, and further assuming her fellow Republicans confirm her as chairman), things in the Finance Committee will proceed according to the status quo. You can count on that.88
86. http://www.opencongress.org/people/compare?utf8=%E2%9C%93&person1=300052& person2=300091&commit=Compare the number is actually 71% 87. www.hatchrecord.com 88. http://www.dethronehatch.com/dismantling-the-olympia-snowe-myth/