The Loss of the Heart and Now the Soul

Olympia Snowe: A voice of reason in an unreasonable place.

If the sanity had not totally escaped the Republican Party before today, it's gone now with the announcement by Olympia Snowe that she will not run again. We all lose with this, though it is easy to understand. She and her Maine colleague Susan Collins were the remaining small pieces of humanity in a party that never had much of a heart, but now has none.

Here's how she ended it: "I am well prepared for the electoral battle, so that is not the issue. However, what I have had to consider is how productive an additional term would be ... Unfortunately, I do not realistically expect the partisanship of recent years in the Senate to change over the short term."