Olympia Snowe wrote an op-ed in the NY Times today that's called: We Didn’t Have to Lose Arlen Specter.
How well have we done as a party with these groups? Unfortunately, the answer is obvious from the results of the last two elections. We should be reaching out to these segments of our population — not de facto ceding them to the opposing party. There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.
The Senator joined Andrea Mitchell this morning and explained in greater detail how the far right "Club For Growth" type elements have destroyed the republican party.
