Here is a picture of Joey. and the new, currently nameless baby, who I will call LaFawnduh for the time being.



LaFawnduh is quiet now, but soon she will be screaming at the top of her lungs.(By all means, you owe it to yourself to click on this photo to see it life size.)



This afternoon I went to the Bangor City Republican Comittee meeting at Husson College. I had never been to anything like that before, and it was a real eye opener. Setting aside Steve Sailer's theory of affordable family formation, which, if true, dooms the BCRC to ineffectual obscurity, I was very disheartened by the tone of the meeting.

When I think of Republicans, I think of conservatism. I read The Corner on NRO, I listen to Rush and Glenn Beck when I get the chance, in my office I have a picture of me shaking hands with John Ashcroft from when he was the Attorney General. Perhaps I learned today is why Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are how they are.

There was a gentleman at the meeting who referred to Susan Collins as a champion, and he was pinning his hopes in 2008 on the champion to electrify the republican voters and carry a bunch of the lower races along on her coat tails. I think the same person opined that somehow "we" needed to reach out to "social conservatives" and make them feel welcome.

I don't know this for a fact, but I got the distinct impression that most of the people in the room were in general agreement, but I didn't have much confidence that any of them relished the idea of rubbing elbows with those peculiar "social conservatives", and I have my suspicions that more than a few of them have NPR programed into their radio.

I have voted for Snowe and Collins every time they have run. I have never written in Mickey Mouse, or abstained, but I always think about. I don't view Susan Collins as a champion, I view her as a liberal, and I suppose I thought that if Republicans really knew how she voted on the important issues of the day, they wouldn't like it. I assumed that she was elected because she was the incumbent, and although seriously flawed, she was undoubtably better than whoever was running against her.

If the meeting I attended was any indication, the lesson Maine republican's learned from the 2006 election was apparently: let's be more like the Democrats. Let's be more moderate, let's distance ourselves from Bush, the Iraq war. Let's embrace wind power, forge a stronger alliance with Europe, and extend a helping hand to those willing to do jobs Americans won't do.

I am begining to understand why so many people in Maine are Democrats. If the Republicans are just beautiful people pretending to be democrat lite, why not vote for a genuine Democrat.