Arlen Specter is going to bat for the other team:
Mr. Specter, who provided President Barack Obama the critical vote for his $787 billion stimulus plan, faced a powerful challenge in 2010 from former Rep. Pat Toomey, who hoped to unseat Mr. Specter in a Republican primary.
Mr. Specter met personally with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada to inform him of his decision, a Reid spokesman said.
Based on his voting record in the past, I wonder if anyone will notice the difference?
Update: TNR says, “Welcome aboard.”
When a politician switches parties, it’s customary for the party he’s abandoned to denounce him as an unprincipled hack, and the party he’s joined to praise him as a brave convert who’s genuinely seen the light. But I think it’s pretty clear that Specter is an unprincipled hack. If his best odds of keeping his Senate seat lay in joining the Communist party, he’d probably do that.
To be sure, Specter is a real moderate on some issues, but his contortions are so comical that no principled read on his actions is very plausible. Specter favored the Employee Free Choice Act favored by labor, turned against it when he faced a primary challenge, and then abandoned his party altogether when it became clear he couldn’t win his primary. In the meantime, he came out in favor of a Hooverite spending freeze after backing the stimulus bill.
I’d find more cause for celebration, but it seems to me that this is emblematic of a hubris that doesn’t need former Republicans.
Good riddance. Senator ComCast will not be missed.
I don’t think so!!!
Benedict Arlin.
He goes from being a disloyal rat to his former party to being a loyal rat to his new one.
This does not seem to me to be a crisis of conscience — more like a ‘saving my political butt’ thing. He has been too long in D. C.
Marianne
The running joke on Free Republic today is “Did you hear? Arlen Spector is switching parties!” “You mean he’s becoming a Republican?”
So much for any chance to filibuster some of the more extreme stuff coming down the pike now. I wonder what the 30 pieces of silver will come in the form of?
And you wonder why he left…………….
Club for Growth members and other conservatives “don’t make any bones about their willingness to lose the general election if they can purify the party,” he said.
“I don’t understand it, but that’s what they say. … There ought to be a rebellion [against them]. There ought to be an uprising.”
Joy in Palin while it lasts………..
I think the senator been batting for the other team for quite some time….
George V.
So he saw a fight coming and he ran from it? Yeah, maybe he really IS a Democrat.
/snark off
As a proud Republican I say good riddance you vacillating prune-head..
I say shake ‘em all out and start from scratch. Back to basics. Options like Ron Paul and his ilk should be tossed, too. Maybe we can find enough fence sitting Independents who want to actually govern instead of playing around being all forms of “Conservatives” and whining about it 24/7…
I actually prefer to be a member of an elite small group who pay the taxes and defend the nation. I ain’t scared to identify with the party of Lincoln in here or on the back of my truck.
It’s just a question of how much crap everyone of you taxpayers and warriors want to take before real change comes.
b2
B2,
The problem is the demographics of the country don’t support your position. And it will get worse as we all get older.
However, if the Republican party wants to atrophy into the party of old white people-well have a good time doing that.
Skippy, are you saying I should abandon my principles and vote for someone who stands for things I abhor, just to win elections?
Look, we’ve heard of the death of the Republican party multiple times over my short life. Still hasn’t happened.
I’m saying the party should be big enough to accomodate a wide variety of opinion and not be so frigging narrow minded that the only judge of who is a Republican is his commitment to ideological purity.
What has Specter done that Lieberman didn’t do? Republicans loved him. All because he supported the abomination that was and is the war in Iraq. So it seems to me hypocritical to roast Specter for making a decision while applauding Lieberman.
No one says you have to abandon your principles-but you are kidding yourself if you think today’s Republican party is the same as the “Party of Reagan”. Even Reagan understood you have to make compromises to get things done.
But not to worry, Saint Sarah is waiting to lead the party down the path to oblivion.
Skippy, that was a valid political belief right up until Bush 41 cut the “no new taxes” deal with the Dems. They redefined compromise as doing things their way. Compromise never flows the other direction. And speaking of narrowmindedness, I think your distaste for the Iraq war has warped some of your perspective.
The Republicans are leading themselves to oblivion by not dealing the RINOs like Specter, and Snowe in their midst. There is already a party that holds their “principles.” It’s called Democrat.
The major problem the Reps have had, for many more years than I’ve been alive, is their willingness to go along with the left-wingnuts so they get a bone tossed their way every now and again. Michaels never got anything done for the party simply because he was not willing to stand up to anything, or anyone. That changed, for a short while after the ’94 elections. When the Reps decided they could do much the same thing as the Dems, they started getting their tail ends handed to them, BY THEIR OWN BASE.
C’mon, Skippy. You really can’t be as naive as you seem to be.
Only 21% of the country identifies as Republican at this point. I don’t really have a point, I just like typing that sentence.
William,
Could you please post a link to back up your claim? Otherwise, it’s just more troll breath stinking up an otherwise nice place.
respects,
It’s from a WAPO/ABCNews poll. Take that for what it’s worth.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/parsing-the-polls/21-percent.html?wprss=thefix
Hey, William. Come back to the fantail tonite and I’ll show you how the garbage chute works. You don’t need to bring a flashlight, I’ll have one.
The poll list 35% identify as Dems, 21% Reps, and 38% Independents.
I suspect a large percentage of the Indy’s will vote conservative if given a chance.
Just another poll where the pollster skewed the participants to meet the intended results. Kind of like a recent poll in my neighborhood. 68% said Coleman should quit the race against Franken. Election results 48.xx% for each. poll split 21% R’s, 68% D’s does not compute.
dave
58% of all statistics are made up at the time of need.
Senator Sphincter will no doubt find love on the other side of the aisle. Good for us and for William @12.
Better for us that our opponents declare themselves rather than continuing to sail under false flags to stab us in the back. Yeah, Sen. Specter, the guy who, went hat in hand to President Bush to beg for his committee chairmanship after he’d shown himself to be a disloyal ass on whatever the topics were at the time. So Bush and the dummy Republicans said ‘it’s Ok’ to Arlen, and allowed him to go on hurting them and us. Until now, when he again hurts us. Will the Republican party ever learn and remember their lessons?
So, Snarlin’ Arlen thinks his chances are better in the party that he finds so much in common with?
He’ll soon discover that once the blush of the switch is over he’ll just be the same clueless twit he’s been, only now the Democrats will have no need to bribe him to get his vote.
You can also count on the seat he occupies going back the other way in 2010 with the number of people he’s totally alienated.
You can also count on the seat he occupies going back the other way in 2010 with the number of people he’s totally alienated.
That’s what the Democrats said about Lieberman. Never underestimate the ability of the voter to realize having a Senator with seniority works to their advantage. I’ll bet you beer right now he gets re-elected.
No bet. I’m thinking he probably will win. Still, better to be rid of him.
I prefer Crown or a good single malt but I’ll go a beer.
Arlen really has pissed off a lot of people with his constant tacking to the winds of political fortune. I doubt he even survives a Democrat primary unless the political bosses drive off *any* competition.
The difference between Lieberman and Snarlin’ Arlen is that one is popular whereas the other is loathed.
Two words: Senator Daschle.
Senate Majority Leader was his title.
The voters of South Dakota decided another voice was needed.
The voters of Pennsylvania? It’s up to them, we who lead by example cannot force others to follow.
But it can be done.
– Max
Skippy-san,
Nice job blurring the heart of the matter. I disagree with Sen. Lieberman, but at least I agree to disagree since he sticks with his principals. Sen Specter has no principles, except to himself, Democrat turned Repub for political gain, back to Democrat for political gain. A selfish SOB, no principles, that is the difference. Throw out your insults to the conservative thought in America, but it only shows your nature. I’m OK with it though. I can swim through the manure President Obama and his ilk excrete.
So in other words-if someone does not toe the party line, they are insulting conservatives. Is that it? You’ll forgive me if I don’t follow you down that dark path. It only shows your intolerant nature.
Specter summed it up well himself:
Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans. When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing. Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion.
It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.
Specter won by his narrowest margin ever in 2004. He will have some competition for the Democratic side in 2010. He’s 79 and is a cancer survivor. If you are going to protest something-protest that he should let the younger generation come forward. Instead all you can find is that he made a decision to acknowledge the fact that the party had already left him-not the other way around.
Specter is right. The Stimulus was necessary-these are not ordinary times. I find it interesting that a stimulus spending package in the midst of the steepest recession in memory is the sticking point. For the GOP to have remained mute under the massive increases in spending and borrowing under Bush but to make resistance to the Obama stimulus package a litmus test for conservatism reveals that the deepest principle of the Republican base is partisanship.
Here’s another false comparison to Lieberman, BTW. Lieberman ran and lost in the Dem primary. He then ran as an independent and won in the general. He didn’t switch party affiliation to rake in campaign money. He took his chances. Aside from the Iraq war, I disagree with him on damn near everything, but he took his chances like a man.
Another difference between the principled Liebermann, and the venal, narcissist Specter. Even though the Dems, in the primary, rejected him, once he won as an independent, he caucused with the Dems. Certainly, the same principled path was open to Specter. I am certain the Repub leadership would have let him keep his seniority, as a caucus member. But narcissists don’t recognize any principles, other than self survival. (for example …).
Brad, I like much of your checklist, and I differ with Skippy’s knee jerk hatred of anything right of Howard Dean. One thing I can agree with Markos Moulitsas on — you don’t win by being a lite version of your opposition. The solution, going forward for the Republicans, is to be, on a national level, the party of fiscal responsibility, a pro growth tax policy, and a firm belief in American exceptionalism (with the requisite strong military). The social issues correctly belong on the state level. There are different moral values between California, and South Carolina, and you will never reconcile them on a universal basis. Move back from the big government idea, and push the social issues to the states (sort of the antithesis of the Bush presidency). Once the Obama fiscal chickens come home to their certain roosts, the reformed Repubs waltz right back in to power.
The stimulous will be very damaging. Left-wingnuts remind me of what was said about the Bourbons, “they leanr nothing and forget nothing.”
Oh wise Guru Skippy, please show us in history where such idiocy has resulted in anything good. It didn’t work in Japan, where they are still suffereing from the problems of their real estate bubble. it didn’t work in the 30s in this country. FDR’s own Treasury Sec. stated so in as many words. So, oh great one, where has it worked?
True conservatism is a matter of dealing with reality, not keynesian stupidity, or enacting creeping Fascism. Specter is not, and never has been a conservative. he has betrayed both parties, and has utterly no principles. he fits in well with the party of McGovern because they have no principles either. Power is the only thing they understand, which is why they are Fascists.
Toomey stands a pretty good chance in the general election. Specter has pretty much worn out his welcome in PA. He might win, but it will be close again. The vote last time was as much of a reflection of him as it was anything else. He’s not even close to a shoo-in for the Dem nomination.
“In this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate”
Allow me to opine, it’s not about the state, or the voters, it’s about what allows him to stay in the Senate.
Yeah, got the message loud and clear.
If I give him twelve pieces of silver will he go away and retire?
Since I can’t vote there, I’m exploring my options…
– Max
Skippy,
There are a few, a very few, of us who want the spending to stop since even a pencil necked pointy headed moron can see that it is unsustainable and totally unreasonable. We’re not asking for much. Most of us recognized many years ago that we could never repay the debt that our legislators have been wracking up in our name to pay for crap. So that’s Article 1 of the Party we want to vote for. STOP SPENDING.
Most of us dislike senseless idiotic government intrusion into every aspect of life. Under the Constitution the powers of government were enumerated and all the rest were reserved to the people. I don’t want to live in a land where the government gets to tell me what I’m allowed to eat and bans foods because they are supposedly dangerous. So that’s Article 2. SMALLER GOVERNMENT.
I used to have some regard for the plight of the rest of the world. I had the sense that much of the civilized world also had some regard for the plight of the rest of the world. Not anymore. I’m tired of bearing the White North American man’s burden for the downtrodden and dirtbags of the world. I no longer support Colonial Fleets occupying distant stations abroad and I don’t have much use anymore for Expeditionary Armies that are now moving closer to the realm of engaging in conflict with fanatics armed with WMD and prepared to use them at the drop of a hat. Article 3. LET THE REST LEARN TO LOVE LIVING WITHOUT AMERICAN POWER.
One really cannot have a moral compass without an appreciation for the moral underpinnings of society. I know you doubt this so I invite your attention to Europe. It lost faith a generation ago and has no more morality than the most venal politician. Some of us can do simple trend analysis. As the moral culture of a society is undermined the entire culture collapses. I’m perfectly happy to have you sneer at such sensibilities but I think the trends are pretty clear. It’s a slippery slope and once started down it there is no coming back. I used to read history and one striking reference for me was in South Africa where the missionaries utterly undermined and destroyed the Zulu culture for the noblest reasons in the world. Article 4. STICK WITH MORALITY.
You can see how absolutely none of the above applies to the Democratic Party. They have absolutely no principles and aren’t reluctant to let the world know of their lack. The one’s good friend and reverend spoke of chicken’s coming home to roost. When social security, medicaire, medicaid and all the other entitlements overwhelm the government what is your plan? The only people that talk about getting control of the debt are the fiscal conservatives and there aren’t any of those in the Democratic party.
Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats.
Out of curiosity – is the Penn. Democratic Presidential Primary a closed primary? Of that 200K that re-registered as Democrat, how many were part of the effort to throw a vote in the hat against Hillary as some talk-radio folks were advocating? (I know a lot here in VA who did exactly that, but aren’t bolting the GOP per se…) What does the trend line from ’02/04/06 for Republican party registration look like ? Dems? Independents?
- SJS
SJS,
I, and several of my friends, make it a point to always answer polls and especially exit polls by always choosing the democrat or liberal position.
Thus, when leaving the polling place last November, and approached by a pollster, I never hesitated to say I voted for the “lightworker” even though I didn’t.
I also know a significant number of registered democrats in Maine who voted for republican candidates and even put signs for them on their lawns because of their disgust with where their party is headed.
The only poll I given any sort of consideration to is the election results. To me, it’s the only one that matters.
Ahh, Steeljaw, there you go again trying to get the whole story, and not just “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”
Regards,
SJS — when you want to justify your selfish interests, any excuse will do.
I’m not so sure Specter can win the primary against an almost certain challenge from Joe Sestak. Specter is old, a turncoat, and too centrist for the true belivers in the Dem primary. The Kos crowd will crucify him, especially if he stays opposed to card check (watch for a flip flop!).
I’m also not certain Toomey could win, should Tom Ridge be enticed into the race. That could set up an interesting fall campaign — Sestak vs. Ridge?
Skippy,
Re OWP
Yep. ..that’s me and I’ll tell you what-to thine own self be true.
I’m actually living pretty good, I’ve indoctrinated my own children from the kool-aid pretty well and I’ll do what has to be done..
You see. I’m consistent.
What you allude to is conservatives becoming more like Dems and that is exactly what got us to lose our way. Mealy talk I call it.
Your mindset is what we must purge from the party. IMO, independents are a bane, although they garner a lot of unnecessary attention, contrarianism ain’t my favorite…Too many idiots walking around without noses on their faces. Sorry- no camping in my tent albeit small(er).
Small tent- that’s cool too. Country boys can survive! We’ll breed to dominance!
b2 the Phoenix!
While I don’t subscribe to the theory it is good for the party to lose a sitting Senator – even one more ideologically aligned with the opposition, I do subscribe to the theory that this may be a wake up call that the GOP needs to start standing for things in actions and not just in words.
The path the Democrats are taking us is dangerously irresponsible and will not be sustainable. If, as I suspect, the Dems don’t get religion and start acting fiscally responsible they will pay the price in 2010, if, the GOP offers up credible conservative candidates not wedded to Washington fantasy-laced solutions.
Its interesting the read all the chattering class bemoan the lack of “moderates” like Spector in the GOP when, on his own admission, he is more philosophically aligned with the Democrats anyway. What’s the use of a two party system if they are both alike? I’m still trying to understand where the “two-party” system as institutional bedrock came from anyway. Oh yeah – the two parties….silly me for thinking the voters actually matter.
SJS
Yes, the Democratic Primary in Pennsylvania is a closed Primary. I guess old Arlen Sphincter is talking about me when he mentions those “200,000″ voters who changed parties for the last election. I did it just to throw a monkey wrench into the Democrat’s plans. I actually have the form filled out to change back ready to go. I was going to put it in the mail sometime this week, but I think I’ll hold off. This will give me a chance to help dump Arlen in next years Primary. There is already a movement forming to do just that. My concern now is that with our dumbass Governor, how many false votes is ACORN going to get away with?
Guys and Gals,
The answer lies in following Arlen! Can you imagine the kumbayah party if the remaining Republican senators ALL decided to become Democrats? Cross the aisles and tell Reid “we’re you’re problem now”. That way some of the more moderate dems would be emboldened to vote as their conscience and constituency dictates. Note I said “some” since most won’t. We don’t need no stinkin two-party system, we just need a party!
Alllll A-booooardddddd!
G-Man/
You laugh, but as you well know, in the old days of the “Solid South” when the GOP was practically non-existent, that’s EXACTLY what people did
who, if they had lived in the mid-West, etc., would have been registered Republicans by nature, but if they wanted to have a meaningful influence on their political masters most registered as Dems, ’cause the Dem primary was where the “real” election took place.