The Limits Of Hoffmanization, Ctd

Christopher Orr's thoughts on that Snowe poll:

Under normal circumstances, this is the kind of insurgent candidacy that would quickly be squelched by the party establishment in the name of holding onto a GOP seat in inhospitable terrain. And perhaps that's still what would happen. But the establishment's clout contra the conservative insurgents is at a historic low, and it wouldn't take much--a Palin endorsement here, a Beck crusade there--to scramble the usual political assumptions.

The real question, of course, is what Olympia Snowe thinks when she sees this poll: that she's probably finished with today's GOP and should keep her independent streak alive by voting for health care reform (or, at least, cloture); or that she badly needs to shore up her right flank by voting against?

Ezra Klein's take on whether Snowe would switch parties:

[Snowe] has deep personal connections to the Republican Party: Her first husband was a Republican legislator in Maine's House of Representatives, and her current husband is the former Republican governor of Maine. Becoming an independent seems a lot likelier than becoming a Democrat.