Arlen Specter did a thing! This thing! Okay, this thing. Sorry, no time for jokes! Hurry hurry! Reax! Get in front! We need an angle! Gotta own the morning! Also the afternoon and the evening and that eerie time when you can’t fall asleep and the sunrise is precisely three hours away! (That is the worst time.)

Quick, what does it all mean?

[T]his makes the GOP Senate caucus that much more conservative, and could perhaps put pressure on the Maine Republicans to consider following suit, especially Olympia Snowe who may not want to remain a forgotten member of a deep and long-lasting Southern-based minority.

Can we try that in headline form?

Snowe says GOP isn’t ‘encouraging’ of ‘moderates,’ will she follow Specter?

Once more, with a pretend British chap:

Second, I bet I’m not the only one who’s wondering how Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are taking this news. The two Maine GOP senators are now more isolated inside their increasingly rightwing and increasingly regional caucus. Are they – especially Snowe, who’s really more liberal than even a couple of the Senate’s Democrats – now asking themselves why they’re still Republicans? You bet they are. It wouldn’t be the most shocking thing in the world to see one or both of them follow.

Beleagured sigh. Listen, flatlanders, here’s how it works. Snowe and Collins sometimes go against the GOP party line because if they didn’t they would lose their seats in a heartbeat, not because Maine wants more progressive representation necessarily, but because the only thing Maine hates more than a RINO or a DINO is a yes-woman or a yes-man. Our problem with legislators who “toe the party line” has nothing to do with the “party,” and everything to do with the “toeing.”

While I’m at it, a common misperception is that Maine’s Senators are popular, and this misperception has spread because they keep winning elections with large chunks of the vote. EH. It’s more like, we are used to having them around. Name recognition goes a long way up here, plus, competent people keep not running against them. And! Having two occasionally-semi-progressive-ish Republican Senators gives us twice as much to complain about: they are either too liberal or too conservative or both at the same time. Complaining about elected officials is our favorite sport, better even than shooting things or fishing for things, and frankly, I sometimes think we keep re-electing Team Purple-ish because we have so many years of memories, such a rich backlog of references, with which to assault them in the comment section of the local newspaper’s idiotically-designed website.

All of which is to say, your speculation is unfounded.