Free Republic

Gregory Hodge, of Jefferson, is urging people on the political left and right to look critically at their party affiliation. Hodge was the state committeeman for the Lincoln County Republicans until he and 11 other Republicans unenrolled from the Maine Republican Party and resigned related positions this week, Hodge joined five other state committee members, Republican National Committee member Mark Willis, and five other registered Maine Republicans in writing a letter outlining their disaffiliation and the reasons behind it to Maine GOP Secretary Chuck Malaheris. The Aug. 18 letter criticizes a number of people, actions, and groups, including rule changes...

The under-the-radar takeover of local GOP organizations by tea partyers has not been limited to Utah. The Republican Party of Maine, home to the GOP's two most moderate senators, has adopted a new platform with planks and rhetoric ripped from the tea party movement and the Ron Paul revolution. Among the planks are: - Return to the principles of Austrian Economics, and redirect the economy back to one of incentives to save and invest. - Discard political correctness, make public the declaration of war (Jihad), made against the U.S. on 23 Feb 1998, and fight the war against the United...

Maine's Grand Old Party sank to a new low this month when its two U.S. senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, bolted across the aisle and helped the party of President Obama pass the $800 billion stimulus bill. If past is prologue, we probably should have expected as much. Snowe and Collins, who pride themselves as being centrist Republicans with a maverick streak in the mold of the late Maine political icon Margaret Chase Smith, have time after time voted or taken positions that are counter to the principles of their own party. For conservative Maine Republicans, the Snowe-Collins rogue...