LIE OF THE WEEK: 11-10-2006

Maine Senator Olympia Snowe on the "mandate" of the recent elections:

"We misread the election of 2004 as a conservative mandate when 45 percent of the American people describe themselves as moderates," Snowe said. "If we move even further towards hard-core ideology, we'll be in the minority for a long time."

THE TRUTH: Whereas she is right that we should avoid moving toward a "hard-core" ideology, she has either completely misread where the American people stand or she is in denial about the truth. The last 20 years of elections prove a fundamental conservative mandate in the American electorate. The 2004 election was more about fear-mongering on homeland security than anything else. And the most recent election was not about "moderating" or becoming more liberal, it was about repudiating the arrogance of the current administration and the Republican majority in both Houses of Congress. The only thing that the Democrats had going for them was that they weren't Republicans. And the majority of the newly elected Democrats are in fact conservative on most issues. If she thinks that the Republican party should become more liberal in response to the 2006 election, she clearly doesn't understand the people she is being paid to represent.