Olympia J. Snowe departs the Congress of Easter Peeps

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 3/2/12

The Post's top lead today tells us that everyone in the small town of Washington, Oklahoma, lives the conservative life. The same could likely be said about the rest of Oklahoma. Those who feel differently, like Elizabeth Warren, might move to Massachusetts. Having lived in every New England state except Connecticut which is really part of New York, I'm glad Warren is here. She's a good fit. She belongs here and I'd vote for her if I lived in Massachusetts. But why should the rest of Oklahoma be forced to be dominated by us New Engalnders? That is the question Olympia J. Snowe should be asking when she returns to Maine. And this one: Why should we in New England be dominated when Texas and Oklahoma run against our moral being? Like in the invasion of Iraq?

Snowe has spoken for years, she says, “about the dysfunction and political polarization” of the Senate. The Senate, she says, “Is not living up to what the Founding Fathers envisioned.” The great challenge, she says, is to “find common ground” and only then will we achieve results for the “common good.”

But in the invasion of Iraq and in many others situations, there is no common ground and there should be no compromise. Snowe supported the invasion and so did most of New England’s senators and representatives although calls were said to be coming into Senator John Kerry's office in Massachusetts ten-to-one against. Instead New England compromised.

Jefferson offered a better solution: In the Kentucky Resolutions of 1797 he said when the states were driven to unconstitutional or illegal actions by the federals they need not and should not participate. The Kentucky Resolutions and the Tenth Amendment were raised recently when the feds forced its will again on the states with Obamacare. This time conservative states like Oklahoma and Texas objected citing Jefferson and 29 states followed. The New England states should have done the same with the Iraq vote.

There is a dark and subliminal human need perhaps for bloody vengeance in our condition (Atlanta, Hiroshima, Baghdad) but it leaves a bitter taste. Those who singularly and heroically oppose, like Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold, are sent back to the hinterland. The compromisers and appeasers remain but are held in little regard and Snowe leaves a Congress today which has an astonishing approval rating of 13 percent.

The Congress of Easter Peeps which she leaves behind also injured our most valued ancestor, Israel, by creating the impression that Israel insidiously ordered the George W. Bush invasion of Iraq from a secret cabal in the U.S. It will take Israel another decade to recover and it can well do so perhaps only by repudiating its relationship with the United States entirely.