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Senator Arlen Specter, the 29-year Senate veteran from Pennsylvania, announced today that he was changing his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. In a statement, he said, "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." One motivating reason: Specter is lagging behind a challenger in the Republican primary. President Obama told Specter, "You have my full support. [We're] thrilled to have you," and now the Democrats have a near-filibuster-proof majority—they'll have it, if Al Franken is ever seated in Minnesota. The GOP, reportedly caught off-guard, is calling an emergency meeting. SFGate points out that Specter's "legacy as former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee was seating [the] two conservative Supreme Court justices...Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito."
Senator Specter Shocks GOP By Becoming Democrat
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The Dems will not have a near-filibuster-proof majority. There are too many blue dogs and DINOS in the party to assure sixty votes on any one bill. It will still be long hard work to get any bills passed. Case in point, even though Specter is switching parties, at the same time he said he still will not support the Employees Free Choice bill.
He was also an utter schmuck to Anita Hill. I'd rather have him as a moderate Republican than Democrat.
Yes, Arlan is no great shakes for Progressive causes - but it is refreshing to once again have the Repubs branded as the party of Southern, White, Evangelical, Psychos. While the effect on the Senate is perhaps negligible, the true story is how a now-radicalized party has left one of it's senior members in the dust.
Can we all say... strumpet... call girl*, harlot, hooker, hussy, lady of the evening, slut, streetwalker, woman of the street ....sorry this is a little misogynistic, but this is how Whore is defined in the dictionary. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Whore
talk about getting in front of wherever the parade is going... unless the repubs were going to do something to him, ie strip him of his chairmanships or something, what's the point? he can't all of a sudden really believe in the Left's agenda does he?
That's only part of it.
Remember Obama's whole "clinging to God and guns" thing? Specter basically agreed, which pissed off the right to no end, and was looked at as a betrayal. His support for the bailouts and his continued strong support for illegal alien amnesty hasn't helped at all either.
Specter was surely to lose the next Republican primary, so he switched parties to save his seat (or so it could be construed).
Remember... he's a "democrat" now, not a "leftist." And, yes, there is a difference.
Rush Limbaugh loses another one ...
Speaking of Mr. Oxycontin: he has been supporting the Humane Society to a degree - which has his mouth-breathing fans going ape-shit.
Why you ask? Because as every wacked-out neo-con should know, the Humane Society's #1 (and wildly secret) goal is to make all hunting ILLEGAL!
Learn something new every day. Look for Mr. Oxycontin to abandon his charity work with the Humane Society in 3...2...
Yes!
lanersq you are nuts. If the dems are going to have 60 votes in the Senate, they're not all going to be progressive. You're going to have some conservative Dems in some states. But that's a lot better than extremist GOPers.
You miss the point. Specter was going to loose his Republican primary to a far right challenger, but the far right challenger would likely have lost the Senate race as Pennsylvania has moved to the left in recent years. The end result had he not switched is likely a more progressive 60th senator. Now we are likely stuck with Specter, since the party is unlikely to support a Dem challenger in a primary.
It's macabre, but Specter ain’t long for this world. If he can stop silly GOP filibusters on important legislation in the next year and then win the 2010 general, his seat likely will be filled by a Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania sometime in the next seven years. The Democrats then have an incumbent ready to take on a challenger (if the GOP even exists then) in the 2016 election. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal for the Democratic Party.
Specter was a Democrat until 1965, so he is technically switching BACK to the Democratic Party. But this announcement only makes official what everyone has suspected for years - that Specter was really a Democrat at heart.
The Republicans are certainly in an identity crisis and aren't in much of a position to be a check on the power of the Dems. But, in the long term, they will be back. Americans don't care much for one-party rule, and if there's one thing on this earth you can count on is that the Dems will find a way to screw things up. They always do. The pendulum will swing back eventually and hopefully we'll still have a country left when it does.