And "Scottish Law" Makes Sixty!
Wow. I thought this ship had sailed and that maybe Specter would pull a Lieberman for his re-election bid. Guess not.
Specter To Switch Parties
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning.
Specter's decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next Senator from Minnesota. (Former Sen. Norm Coleman is appealing Franken's victory in the state Supreme Court.)
"I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary," said Specter in a statement. "I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election."
He added: "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."
Specter as a Democrat would also fundamentally alter the 2010 calculus in Pennsylvania as he was expected to face a difficult primary challenge next year from former Rep. Pat Toomey. The only announced Democrat in the race is former National Constitution Center head Joe Torsella although several other candidates are looking at the race.
The precariousness of Specter's political position -- a Republican in a Democratic-leaning state -- was on display earlier this year when he was one of three GOP Senators to back President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus plan. That vote was strongly condemned by conservative Republicans and Toomey used that vote as the launching pad for his candidacy.
Because of the shrinking Republican vote in the state, Specter was seen as a dead man walking politically in the primary with polling showing him trailing Toomey by ten or more points. The bar for Specter to run as an independent was also extremely high due to the rules governing such a third party candidacy.
That left a Democratic candidacy as Specter's best option if he wanted to remain in the Senate beyond 2010.
So ... open questions:
1. How accepting are PA Dems really going to be toward this? There's no big names already in the Senate race, but there doesn't seem to be a shortage eying it.
2. The real fun starts when Al Franken is seated. I remember seeing an interview of Alan Cranston in the late 80s or early 90s when he was heading up the DSCC. The Dems were in the mid-50s for seats then and Cranston commented on how he was looking forward to pushing for a filibuster-proof majority of 60. At the time, I thought he was nuts - particularly in the political mood of the era. My, how times change. It'll be interesting to see what issues get put on the agenda when the scoreboard reads 60, or if the administration just plays it cool and runs with the agenda on a normal timeline. Health Care looks like it may be the first test of this.
ADD-ON: Specter's quote ...
"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 said in a statement. "I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election."
He may not have "pulled a Lieberman" in terms of the precise party-switch maneuver, but the messaging is very much akin to Lieberman's rationale.
ADD-ON 2.0: Burka eggs on KBH ... not to go ahead and resign (her departure would no longer be a factor in the GOP's status in the Senate) ... but to switch parties.
He makes a curious case, but I don't see it happening. Kay's had way too much time wrapped up in GOP circles.
Categories
Politics-20093 Comments
Leave a comment
A random question: I remember you saying somewhere that the ideal coalition party would have the diversity of the Democratic Party in the late 1980s, post-Phil Gramm's defection. Would KBH be on the right side of that Phil Gramm divide? She's not a sneering Norquist Dixiecrat with an enourmous chip on her shoulder, but if I recall correctly, didn't she argue that giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship would basically destroy the United States tax structure?
I remember once taking some political quiz that matched you up with an ideal Presidential candidate from elections in the recent past. I ended up getting the same overall score as John Anderson from Illinois, but my friend pointed out that I scored conservative where he was liberal and liberal where he was conservative. In other words, I was the inverse of John Anderson.
That's sorta how I feel about KBH. Not a perfect parallel given the party shifts since then. But I don't think she'd be without a decent argument to make if it were to happen. I don't think it would be the biggest stretch ever, politically. But at the end of the day ... I just don't see her as the type to even consider the idea for a split second.
I did advocate for Carole Strayhorn to switch parties before the 2004 election. I think hindsight now proves that that would have been wise for her. The fact that I have an easier time accepting her hypothetical move over an equally hypothetical KBH switch probably has more to do with the issues they've presided over in their respective offices. The amount of ideological difference between them, however, is probably negligible.
I agree that KBH probably would never consider it - from what I've read, her husband Ray was one of the most respected politicians in the Texas Lege, at a time when the intraparty fights between conservative, moderate, and liberal Democrats were more important than the Republican Party. And I'd like to think that true believers actually have more ability to buck the party line than less secure sorts (cf. the conservative arguments that can be made for sustainable, i.e. community-oriented, i.e. values-inducing development, or gay marriage, or "creation-care" justified environmentalism). But if it's true, that would, I suppose, make party identity all the more fundamental to their philosophy.
By the way, just for fun I dug up CQ's vote study of the 110th Congress vis-a-vis the Bush Administration (http://www.cqpolitics.com/cq-assets/cqmultimedia/flash/votestudy/index.html), and if we cast a net to include basically everyone the ACU rates under 70, and/or people to the left of Judd Gregg in the CQ study's "Presidential Support" or Party Unity scores, we can look forward to, of course, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, less predictably but still unsurprisingly Lisa Murkowski, Mel Martinez's open seat, George Voinovich, and John McCain, but also Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, Lamar Alexander, KBH herself, Richard Lugar, Charles Grassley, (pauses for a deep breath) Thad Cochran, Christopher Bond, Pete Domenici, John Thune, and Richard Shelby to all see the light someday. How anybody thinks Judd Gregg is a moderate with senators like that supporting the President and/or voting with the majority of the Republican Caucus less often is beyond me - unless it really is enough to be from New England, heh.
...Lord, it'd be like somebody resurrected the New Deal Coalition. We'd need to bring back the Boll Weevils but as a bonefied ideological caucus, just to give Republicans a name to describe people to the right of the Blue Dogs, and to avoid the end of the world through the sheer irony of attacking "Socialist John Thune."