Really? They acknowledge that her Senate seat is entirely safe, in which case what’s so “mavericky” about casting a vote that (a) ensures a degree of input into the final bill that other Republicans can only envy and (b) earns her the sort of fawning media coverage of which this very piece is a sterling example?

The Palin comparison is useful, though. If Sarahcuda had said something as comically insipid as “When history calls, history calls,” Tina Fey would have an entire skit built around it on SNL this week. As it is, our moronic media’s treating it as some sort of faux-profound rendezvous with destiny.

Forget Sarah Palin. The female maverick of the Republican Party is Sen. Olympia Snowe…

“When history calls, history calls,” Snowe told her colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee, several hours into the debate.

Snowe had kept virtually all of Washington guessing how she would vote, not even letting Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., or Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana in on her secret. She did call her Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Tuesday morning to break the news about her plans…

Snowe may face a rough time with her Republican colleagues in the Senate but not necessarily in fiercely independent Maine.

“I don’t think there’s any possible negative political implication,” said Sandy Maisel, director of Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. “She is untouchable electorally in the state of Maine.”

Some maverick. Here she is in all her mavericky glory, giving an exclusive!!! and otherwise substance-less interview to ABC about the process going forward. Exit question: Was there any reason not to tell Obama, Reid, and Baucus in advance how she was voting aside from wanting to bait the media by building a feeling of suspense? Click the image to watch.