Presto – Changeo
Arlen Specter is at it again. This time the inventor of the Magic Bullet Theory is distorting reality and insulting our intelligence by switching the R after his name to a D.
Over his nearly 30-year career as the senior senator from Pennsylvania, Specter has been rightly called a moderate Republican. And now that the nutjobs on the right have hijacked the party, and moderates like Specter are needed to wrest the party back from the silly season it has fallen into, Specter is jumping ship. And he wants us to believe that his change of heart has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he could very well lose next year's primary contest against a more conservative Republican. Said the master of the razzle-dazzle:
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.
Translation: More in line with the increasingly Democratic population, to better his chances of plunking his 79-year-old ass back down in the Senate for another six years.
UPDATE: On his second day as a Democrat, Specter voted against the president's budget, as did three other Dems. The Dems could gather only 53 votes for the budget, with 0 votes by the RCP (Republican Contrarian Party) and with 2 Dems not voting. So all the media chatter Specter giving the Dems the magic 60-vote milestone is just so much hot air.
Comments
I'm skeptical about his motives too, but I am enjoying the PR nightmare he's created for the Republican Party. :-)
By the way, back in February, a columnist in a Pittsburgh paper wondered why he stayed with the party. She also pointed out some of his fairly moderate stances:
It's a shame that the more moderate Republicans like him got steamrolled by the extremists. "Liberal" has always been a dirty word to them and now "moderate" is apparently dirty too.
Posted by: Kathy | April 29, 2009 01:03 PM
Too bad the dems sold their soul and promised him that they would support him in his upcoming election. God knows we can do better than Specter. He had many reservations with the neocons but when it came time to vote he was more than nought with them. I say stick with him until the election and then thank him for his service and give him a watch ... a Mickey Mouse Model.
Posted by: Lev | April 29, 2009 05:10 PM
Kathy, I'm enjoying that too. I don't expect him to vote any differently on any thing because of this name change. But he is making a statement that others (like Olympia Snow) might/should pick up and run with.
Lev, I'm not sure Specter's affiliation change will do the Dems any good, other than creating the PR nightmare Kathy mentioned. So I wouldn't even give him a Mickey watch - maybe a Benedict Arnold statuette.
Posted by: abi | April 29, 2009 05:19 PM
I see Mr. Limbaugh has invited McCain to join Specter in the move to the Dems.
The sad part of all this is that a government needs a good opposition, a one party state rarely turns out well.
Posted by: Dennis Cartledge | May 2, 2009 05:49 PM
That's so true, Cart. And Limbaugh has a lot to do with marginalizing Republicans as the party of radical nutjobs.
Posted by: abi | May 3, 2009 08:20 AM