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Pennsylvania is going from having a reputation of "Philly in the East, Pittsburgh in the West, and Alabama in the middle" to being rapidly absorbed into the BosWash Megalopolis (and the more leftist attitudes that accompany it).
I might add, that being a fiscal conservative as many in suburban Philadelphian are is not the same as adopting the ever increasingly strident strain of social conservatism that dominates the GOP. As you pointed out, in your earlier post (which I reped you for so don't claim it was ignored) 200,000 changed their registration from Republican to Democratic in the last primary round.
MSNBC is reporting that they just confirmed with his staff that Senator Arlen Specter will be switching parties from Republican to Democrat.
This, along with Al Franken, will give Democrats a filibuster-proof 60 votes!
While I do not like the fact that the Democrats will have a "filibuster-proof" majority, it's no big loss to Republicans that Spector is joining the Democrats. For us, his leaving is our gain. He was a RINO of the worst kind. He voted more with Democrats on virtually every issue. Good-bye, and good ridance. Don't let the door hit you in the rear end.
Do you think Specter changed parties for anything other than personal political reasons? Maybe he sees which way the wind is blowing in his home state, and is taking measures in advance of the next elections.
Of course he is. He switched parties in 1965 after all and now he's doing it again. I don't buy any bull**** about changes of heart. Like Lieberman, he just wants to stay in office and will run on whatever ticket he has to. Specter is and always has been part of the Senate's official Douchebag Brigade (or "main stream partnership" or whatever they call themselves) - up there with McCain, Lieberman, Graham and Bayh.
Very very cold political calculation here. Ice cold. Simply put, he cannot ****in' win as a Republican. Either he loses to Toomey in the primary, or the primary battle makes him completely unelectable in the general. So, he figures he can leverage his incumbent power to steal the Democrat slot instead. Then he won't have any real challenger for the seat, even Dems will vote for him to keep out Toomey. It's a low down dirty trick just like what Lieberman pulled with his "independent" run.
And the institutional powers inside the Democratic Party will welcome one more vote anytime, no matter the ideological cost.
Specter is considerably more conservative than some of the legacy ****wits like Baucus and Landrieu that, to be honest, are only in this party to give us a majority. The reason this really hurts is because Pennsylvania is WAY BLUE this election cycle (deeper blue than Obama's victory for sure) and we could have elected someone at LEAST as liberal as Bob Casey or Jeff Bingaman to represent that state. I dunno why the dumbass Daily Kossacks are celebrating at this. The 'all important' 60th vote isn't worth having another douchebag Liebermanite on our flank from a deep blue state, not unless this is his last term.
IMO the biggest impact of all this is how this looks to independent voters.
Leaving a party is not a small decision and it attracts a lot of attention. And it's hard not to notice that the party being abandoned is consistently the republican party.
It's like watching rats deserting a sinking ship, it makes you think twice about sailing on that ship.
IMO, Specter's move is going to have a lot of independent voters thinking twice about whether they want to sail on the sinking ship that the GOP has become.
I wonder if you thougt this when so many Democrats left the Party for the Republican Party not too many years ago?
Historically, the party controlling the White House almost always loses seats in an off year election. 2010 will probably be no different and if the economy is the same or worse the Republicans will win big.
Yeah, and historically, old white guys get elected to the Presidency. Looks like "historically" isn't a good frame of reference anymore, huh?
The nice thing is that now the Dems can't blame the Republicans for stopping anything because they will be in absolute complete control...so no excuses and they can pass all of those socialist policies that they want so badly.
Absolutely, the Republican Party need to have "republican purity boards" those that aren't really acceptable need to be purged.
If this isn't the slap in the face wake up call to the GOP then we as a party are done. It's frustrating that we have allowed the far right to become the face of our party, and you see how well that has worked. There needs to be some one with the stones to say Rush, shut up you not in charge of the GOP, your not helping us get our message across your only pushing the moderates away. To bad Steele isn't that guy.
No, he has always been a Republican, a member of a Republican Party that existed long before the crazies took control. He is a Republican in the same mold as (I can't believe that I am saying this) Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and George H.W. Bush. The same sort of Republican that saw the GOP produce such distinguished legislators as Everett Dirksen, Nelson Rockefeller, Edward Brooke, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
Now name one single solitary hard right red blooded Republican presently in the party that carries the intellectual and political weight of any of the above mentioned members of the Party.
Aye, there's the rub. The only GOP leader fitting that mold (you forgot Jacob Javitz) just became a Democrat. The younger neocons have had a very detrimental effect on the country and their party. There is no eminence gris to lead the Republicans...Rove may have read The Prince but clearly didn't understand it. I can hear William F. Buckley spinning in his
grave...Lincoln too.
If this isn't the slap in the face wake up call to the GOP then we as a party are done. It's frustrating that we have allowed the far right to become the face of our party, and you see how well that has worked. There needs to be some one with the stones to say Rush, shut up you not in charge of the GOP, your not helping us get our message across your only pushing the moderates away. To bad Steele isn't that guy.
You've summed up my thoughts exactly. I'm only 22 and at age 18 I was easily impressionable when I registered to vote. At the time I was NOT a happy camper with the direction President Bush was taking our country in and yet there were no outspoken moderate Republican role models to help sway me to the GOP, hence why I registered as a Democrat and voted for John Kerry on my 18th birthday. The far-right has used the Republican party as their platform to spew their hateful and idiotic vitriol, and I do NOT want to be associated with that nonsense (nor do most of my friends who have since defected from the GOP to the Dems). Can someone please put a muzzle on people like Limbaugh and Coulter?
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