As I pointed out, neither Snowe nor Collins are moderates. They are staunchly conservative. Take a look at their voting records.
I checked Snowe out
here. It concludes that
quote:
Olympia Snowe is a Moderate Populist Conservative.
Collins looks to have a similar record. I'm not sure how you are seeing any 'lockstep' out of her voting record. APHA rates her at 38% (how often she votes the way the organisation would prefer) which is fairly high for a Republican (who tend to be around 10-20% mark from a brief scan of the data), I only saw one that was higher (Collins equals it). That said, I'm not American Politics expert and maybe I've got something wrong or maybe you are weighting the voting record using some unstated metric.
For instance, she may have voted for DOMA but then most Dem Senators did too so from a relative point of view she wasn't just being lockstep with Republicans but the whole Senate. On the other hand, she did vote against a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, unlike many Republicans. She is also voted liberally for anti-homophobia laws, in contrast to many of her fellow Republicans. Is this record outweighed entirely by her vote regarding recent healthcare reform? And her other healthcare votes? Certainly they lean towards her party, but she votes contra-Republican in a fair number of places.
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