Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter is a man of principle who, no longer able to abide the rightward drift of the Republican Party, made the difficult decision to abandon it in favor of the Democratic Party, with which he is more ideologically aligned.
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter is a political mercenary who, faced with a tough re-election primary next year, abandoned his political home of almost 30 years, not to mention the many voters and contributors who supported him.
This may be one of those rare political stories in which everyone is right.
Specter, a five-term senator, has indeed become an increasingly uncomfortable fit over the years with the GOP. The most recent example: He was one of just three congressional Republicans to vote for the president’s stimulus package.
But he says he didn’t so much leave his party as the other way around.
That may be so figuratively — the big tent has been shrinking these past eight years — but it is quite clear who is the leaver in this episode and who is the leave-ee.
“This is a very serious act of betrayal,” former Pennsylvania Congressman Pat Toomey told Sean Hannity the night of Specter’s announcement. “I mean, he’s been, at least nominally a Republican for 30 years, taken Republican contributions, taken Republican support ... .”
And after we gave Arlen the best years of our life, you can almost hear Toomey say.
Of course, Toomey is the person who had planned to challenge Specter in next year’s primary (and may now face him in the general election) so he’s not about to paint the senator’s decision as anything other than political perfidy. Specter’s former Senate colleagues, however, offered diverging views on his departure. Some mirrored Toomey’s assessment; others turned the mirror on themselves. The two schools of thought were:
Specter the Opportunist: “Sen. Specter’s decision today represents the height of political self-preservation,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Specter the Symbol: “If the Republican Party fully intends to become a majority party in the future, it must move from the far right back toward the middle,” said Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, one of the party’s few remaining moderates.
The significance of Specter’s defection goes beyond armchair political junkies. He brings to 59 the number of senators who are either Democrats (57) or regularly vote with them (two). Which means should soon-to-be-former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman acknowledge reality and concede his razor-thin loss to Democrat Al Franken in Minnesota (he won’t), or should the Minnesota Supreme Court affirm all lower court rulings and declare Franken the winner (it will) and the election certificate be signed by Republican Gov. Tim Paw-lenty (he’d better), the Democrats would have a conceivable 60 votes. This is the magic number needed to block filibusters — a strategy being used with increasing frequency by the outnumbered Republicans.
