A former Pennsylvanian welcomes his party's newest Senator (to be)

[thatcrazycajun]

Today, the senior US Senator of the state where my Songbird and I resided until about six years ago (and where she lived for over two decades prior), Republican Arlen Specter, shocked his constituents (and plenty of other folks as well) by announcing he is switching parties to run for re-election next year as a Democrat. The full story is here.

Money quote from the Pennsylvanian: "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."

And from the state GOP chair: "The Republican Party has room for conservatives and moderates because we are the party of ideas." This single sentence offers two proofs of the Repugnants' continuing nationwide residence in the State of Denial since last November: The plain fact is that the GOP chased out almost all of its liberals and moderates starting back when Specter joined, to elevate those Reaganite trickle-downers, "Christian" dominionist "morals" crusaders and movement conservatives into sole control of the party...which is why Specter's luckless Senate colleague John McCain had to surrender so much of his soul in his failed run for President under their banner last year. And the reason those liberals and moderates left, now including Specter, is because the only ideas allowed in the party these days are those dear to the hearts of these three factions...which were tried the last eight years and found substantially wanting.

Specter may well be the last senior moderate—what was once called a "Rockefeller Republican"—to exit. Welcome to the party you probably should have been in all along, sir (and in fact apparently were in, up until about the time I got out of training pants), and thank you for your many years of service and your courage today...not to mention for putting our party just one vote away from that 60-seat super-majority I've been hoping for since last fall (and that we'll have once that asshat Norm Coleman finally runs out of lawyer $$$ and Al Franken gets seated as he should have been months ago).

And an aside to his now-former partymate, secessionist Texas Gov. Rick Perry: As a high school graduate of your state and former resident therein for several years of my childhood, I have only this to say: Don't y'all let the doorknob hit you where the good Lord split you! (Not that I wish any disrespect or ill whatsoever to my dear friends who live in the Lone Star State, especially not the prospect of being separated from the US to live under the misrule of clods like Perry. But you few are sadly far outnumbered by the Texans whose removal from the Union would doubtless up our national IQ about a hundred points.)

Comments

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

Will the last heretic driven out of the Republican Party please turn off the (by God old-fashioned incandescent) lights?

[zsero.livejournal.com]

You're welcome to him. There was no principle at all involved here; he simply realised that the suckers who supported him in the primary against Pat Toomey five years ago weren't going to be suckered a second time. Toomey raised over $100K just in the first week of his campaign, and the polls showed that primary voters were responding enthusiastically to the chance of having an actual Republican to represent them. So long as he thought he had a chance in the primary he kept going on about how important it was to keep the Democrats from getting that 60th seat, and how he would stay a Republican to prevent the US from turning into a single-party state; but as soon as he realised he would lose the primary, all that no longer mattered.

Specter is everything voters have come to hate about the Republican Party: desperately grasping for power, while utterly rejecting the principles the party claims to stand for. He's a liberal, a believer in taxing and spending and bailouts, and he's belonged in the Democrats for years. In 1996, just two years after the GOP won both houses of Congress and four years before it won the White House, he launched a brief bid for the presidency, and spent the whole time lecturing Republicans about how out of touch they were with average Americans.

He claims to have been part of Reagan's "big tent". But Reagan said: "A political party cannot be all things to all people. It cannot compromise its fundamental beliefs for political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers. It is not a social club or fraternity engaged in intramural contests to accumulate trophies on the mantel over the fireplace [...] No one can quarrel with the idea that a political party hopes it can attract a wide following, but does it do this by forsaking its basic beliefs? By blurring its own image so as to be indistinguishable from the opposition party?" That's exactly what Specter was all about. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Sure, but it is also true that he and the Republican Party have been drifting apart for some time, which is why he has become so unpopular within his party. It pretty much mirrored what happened with Leiberman.

The alternative was to go the route of Lincoln Chaffee, a moderate NE R Senator from RI who was consistently criticized by the conservative wing of his own party. Although Chaffee ultimately survived his primary test in 2006, he was defeated by the D challenger because of the general unpopularity of the R brand in the NE.

The result is that we see more Dems in both houses, but the D brand is diluted by the more "conservative" or "moderate" elements. The Rs now have stronger party discipline, but are not in a position to push an affirmative agenda.

The mechanisms of government in this country drive policy toward the center by dividing government and further dividing representation within the legislative branch. It yields different results from the English Parliamentary system, where the legislative and executive branch are sufficiently unified that a government with a substantial majority in Parliament can carry out an agenda until they suffer serious reversals in a general election. This was why Thatcher was able to implement such a transformative agenda during her tenure. Reagan, by contrast, was driven more to the center on tax reform and other economic issues by the need to negotiate with Congress.

Texans

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

I think Texas is a big enough state that any generality about Texans, or even about the majority of Texans, is likely to be off base.

Nate

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Nate Silver has some good coverage on this at 538.com. It's an interesting question whether Specter will end up voting in line with Ds now that he is no longer constrained by some concepts of party discipline.

For myself, I'm of two minds. OTOH, I like to make it as easy as possible for folks to agree with me. OTOH, I had wanted a strong progressive to run in the D primary in PA.