LAMENTING the resignation of GOP Senator Olympia Snow, other liberals in the Republican party expressed disappointment yesterday that voters care about issues other than the economy. Gee, they ask, why is the basic breakdown of society such a big deal to these people? The New York Times reports:

Georgia Chomas, a cousin of the senator who described herself as more like a sister, said social conservatives and Tea Party activists in Maine were hounding her at home, while party leaders in Washington had her hemmed in and steered the legislative agenda away from the matters she cared about.

“There was a constant, constant struggle to accommodate everyone, and a lot of pressure on her from the extreme right,” Ms. Chomas said from her real estate office in Auburn, Me. “And she just can’t go there.”

Mike Castle, a former moderate Republican House member from Delaware and a friend of Ms. Snowe and her husband, expressed a similar view.

“All of a sudden we’re talking about abortion. We’re talking about contraception. We’re talking about social issues that were not that big a deal,” said Mr. Castle, who lost his 2010 Senate bid to a Tea Party insurgency during the primary.

“Senator Snowe wants to focus on bringing down the deficit and getting the economy on track, and that’s where the priorities should be,” said Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, another moderate who served with Ms. Snowe in the Senate before leaving the Republican Party.

                                    — Comments —

Joe Long writes:

As I wrote on Facebook yesterday, “Many people stridently insist that social issues are ‘not important’, but somehow those people are never willing to just let me have MY archconservative way, on those little, ‘unimportant’ issues. Riddle me that.”

There may be a few out there who do truly think that economic issues are everything, but it seems more than coincidence that those people who claim to take that view, are always willing to accomodate Leftist sensibilities and never, ever traditional ones. This is particularly interesting when the traditionalist point of view (for instance, on homosexual pseudogamy, or on immigration) is the POPULAR point of view by a considerable margin, and so any shrewd thinker without an attachment to a particular point of view would make a point of being friendly or at least tolerant to the right-wing opinion…

 Laura writes:

Exactly. No one really believes social issues are not important. When “moderate” Republicans protest, they are simply expressing agreement with the dominant establishment view on social issues.

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