Why I despise Lib Media... essay on NYT, Useful Idiots and Olympia Snowe

In homage to Maine Senator Olympia Snowe retiring, NYT comes out with one of the most biased anti-common sense overviews of political 'civility' they've attempted yet.
- The blatherings of Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, possibly excepted.

Editorial

Desperate for Civility

You dont have to get past the very first of it to find fault:

Senator Olympia Snowe, for one, is ending her 34 years on Capitol Hill by becoming a board member of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, a nonpartisan advocacy group founded after the Arizona shooting last year that killed six people and gravely wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

 In case you don't already form an inference, the context of the entire article will be wrapped around the 'lack of cooperation' from Republicans and Conservatives.
And yet, almost ALL the slander and name-calling around the Giffords shooting came from the left and the leftist press.  Especially blaming Sarah Palin and the shadowy 'Tea Party'.
It turned out, of course, that the shooter had no political ties or agenda other than having formed a hatred of authority. He probably didn't even know anything about Palin or the Tea Party. In short, he was a nutjob.

Her {Snowe's} career goes back long before House Republicans disdained all attempts at bipartisanship as weakness, and before the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, made the filibuster his cudgel and announced that his top priority was to make Barack Obama a one-term president.

And of course it goes back before the Democrats took over Congress  in 2006 and Pelosi bragged about 'hitting the ground running' yet did absolutely NOTHING in their first 120 days. To the NYT, that is not obstructionist, of course.

 Nor do they mention that the Tea Party wasn't even around back then, or that the new minority of old GOP hacks was far more tractable than before the Tea Party sent the message. Evidence?  Try 'Gang of 14'; which included Snowe and Collins and esp McCain, Lindsay Graham.. and Mike Dewine.  Without benefit of Tea Party scheming or anti-Dewine campaign, we Ohio Republicans not-voted Dewine out. Sherrod Brown is the result, my miscalculation.. but I wanted to send a little message.  The Nuclear Option, when examined was an attempt to re-formulate a political principle on filibustered confirmation votes.. not bring the country down.
- If the idea sticks in your liberal craw, does the likelihood of GOP filibustering an Obama appointment bother you? What's the difference, other than who is in power?

Indeed you won't find ANY criticism of Harry Reid, who has made Obstruction an art form.
Speaking of Reid.. let's address the mention of Michell McConnell, above:
What does the writer call this?

Salt Lake City Tribune: Harry Reid says working with a President Romney is 'laughable' 

Maybe the good lady Snowe should speak to him. 

I didn't just start paying attention yesterday.. Maine has produced a remarkable Lady-Senator-Statesman but it certainly was not Olympia Snowe.

She {Margaret Chase Smith} said McCarthyism had "debased" the Senate to "the level of a forum of hate and character assassination."^[3] She defended every American's "right to criticize...right to hold unpopular beliefs...right to protest; the right of independent thought."^[21] While acknowledging her desire for Republicans' political success, she said, "I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horseman of calumny -- fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear."

I agree one hundred percent with Sen Smith's statements.  I reserve the right to voice my own beliefs. And I agree that the worst outcome of Senate hearings ever was the attempt to quiet and blacklist Communists in the US. 
The result being what we see today... an agenda of authoritarian central planning and economic control concealed in the cloak of Progressivism and the Democratic Party.
Snowe's attempts at 'Civility' will be a one-way effort in outcome.  'Moderation' to Leftists means 'do it our way'. 
Need proof?  Their spoken views on Romney before he ran for president vs after he was endorsed by Tea Party.

In Summary:
The tone of political discourse today is not all that much different than it has been in the past.   That doesn't mean we should put up with it.  But on the other hand, don't throw stones or let others do it and applaud, while your own followers and propagandists commit worse.