Arlen Specter validates the mobster heckling him

Recently converted Democrat Arlen Specter, who less than year ago was a Republican "moderate", let some disruptor bring his town hall meeting to a dead stop. He did demand that the guy leave. But then he stood there while the nasty old white guy berated him. When the guy finally shut up and left, Specter validated the FOX interpretation of the Republican mob movement, saying, "We've just had a demonstration of democracy."



I would say he did two things right. He had security and police there ready to deal with disruptors. And he called the guy on his action and demanded that he leave. Both were good ideas.

But then Specter undercut the good effects of his actions by restraining the police and security from expelling him and letting the guy stand there and rant, bringing the meeting to a halt and trying to intimidate others in the crowd with his belligerence. No, Sen. Alleged Democrat Specter, that was not "a demonstration of democracy". That was a display of you validating the Republican mob tactic by allowing to shout and rant to his heart's content. Having the guy summarily removed would have sent the right message in the context of today's national campaign of Republican mob intimidation. In the eyes of the mob movement, that guy achieved his purpose.

Tags: arlen specter, republican party

And another thing

How many times have you heard Harry Reid or other leading Democrats raising hell about the Republicans' blatant attempt - so far successful - to keep the Minnesota Senate candidate who actually won the election as a Democrat, Al Franken, out of his Senate seat?

Yeah, me either.

But Reid is willing to nobly stand up for Arlen Specter as a new Democrat because it's such an urgent priority to dilute the influence of those horrible liberals like Barack Obama within the Party.

Tags: arlen specter, democratic party, republican party

Specter the Democrat

Talk about brand dilution! The San Francisco Chronicle's Carolyn Lochhead is the most faithful stenographer for Beltway Village conventional wisdom that I've come across. She writes about it in Specter's defection changes game for Dems 04/29/09.

It was easy to guess that the Village would love this part:

It also could shift the ideological fulcrum of the Democratic Party, which is led by liberals such as Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi but now more than ever is beholden to its rising centrist wing.

What's next? A "bold" Harry Reid initiative to "reduce the partisan rancor" by appointing Republicans to head all Senate Committees? That should reduce the influence of all those actual Democrats wicked liberals like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.

Welcoming Joe Lieberman back into the fold with open arms after the Presidential election was bad enough. now we're talking about even more serious brand dilution.

And I think we-need-60-votes business is nonsense. The Democrats can eliminate the filibuster rule with a 51-vote majority. Instead, they are hiding behind the 60-vote filibuster excuse to duck responsibility for not delivering on important measures Democratic voters want and for doing baffling deals like welcoming rightwing Republican and loyal Cheney-Bush supporter Arlen Specter into the Democratic Caucus, letting him count his full time in the Senate as a Republican toward his Democratic seniority.

Well, I guess it was because the Republicans won such stunning gains in the 2006 and 2008 elections that Reid thinks he needs to broaden the Party's appeal to Republican voters. No, wait...

Tags: arlen specter, democratic party, republican party

Specter's switch

Arlen Specter: Harry Reid's new member of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party

Arlen Specter on Tuesday switched from the Senate Republican Caucus to the Democratic one, thereby making both caucuses more conservative.

I'm not celebrating having Arlen Specter as a Democrat. Because he's not. He's an opportunist who is running in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania next year because he thinks he has a better chance there than with his own Party.

I used a lot of the material in this post in a comment on another blog, but I thought I would post it here as well.

I would love to see a real Democrat challenge and defeat Specter in the 2010 primary. And if the post I saw at Media Matters today is correct, he couldn't pull a Joe Lieberman and then run as an independent in the general, because Pennsylvania election law forbids someone who ran in a party primary and lost from doing that.

I'm now convinced that Harry Reid and some of the more timid Senate Democrats are hiding behind this 60-vote business as an excuse for their failures. What kind of Democratic majority do we have to have to get universal health care, protect union organizing and get highly qualified appointees approved on a timely basis?

As far as I'm concerned, the whole deal over the "nuclear option" and the Gang of 14 in 2006 abolished the filibuster in practice. The Democrats can just vote the filibuster rule away with a 51-vote majority, in any case.

So why in the name of Andy Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt are they allowing Specter to come over, recognizing his full time in the Senate as Democratic seniority (and therefore possibly bump a real Democrat from an important Committee Chairmanship) when in his press conference to announce the switch he says he's going to oppose the Dems on the critical union rights vote and oppose Obama's anti-torture nominee for the Office of Legal Council? What kind of deal-making is that? Harry Reid style, I suppose.

I will say with very high confidence that most voters who went for Obama and Democratic Senate and House candidates did not intend to vote for welcoming people like McCain loyalist Joe Lieberman and hardline rightwinger Arlen Specter into the Democratic caucus with open arms.

One of the rare bad books that the great Theodore Dreiser wrote was a left-wing isolationist one called America Is Worth Saving (1941). But it does have a couple of memorable moments, especially a chapter called "Does England Love Us As We Love England?" in which he argues that England repeated takes advantage of the United States with slick diplomacy and the US just keeps coming back for more. That's a crude and misleading framing of the situation in 1941. But substitute the Republican Party for England and the Democrats in Congress for the United States, and this is an excellent metaphor:

The most superficial reader of our American history cannot deny that, of all countries in the world, England is the one that has shown the least affection for us - and consequently, one might think, deserves the least affection from us.

But no. It doesn't work that way. We are as a people what Professor Freud calls masochistic. Our greatest thrill is being kicked in the tail - as long as England, the object of our blind adoration, does the kicking. In fact our nation motto in so far as our relation to dear old England is concerned is: "Kick me again, daddy!" Kick me and kick me again, please.

If the Republican Party really implodes in 2010 and 2012, then the Democratic Party might actually break into two separate parties, hopefully the more liberal one being far more willing to fight for their voters than the Dems are today. But until then, primary challenges by Fighting Dems are a key way to address this. Because voting for Republicans to protest against Harry Reid is not an option. As bad as Specter is, he was one of the least bad Republicans in the Senate. As of Tuesday, he's now one of the worst Democrats.

Come to think of it, when is Harry Reid up for re-election in Nevada?

Tags: arlen specter, democratic party, republican party