Senator Specter And The Few Remaining Republican Moderates

Senator Arlen Specter's decision to switch parties yesterday was a stunning turn of events.  Last Friday, a Rasmussen poll showed his primary opponent, former Congressman and staunch conservative, Pat Toomey, with a 51-30% lead.  Specter expressed regret that "so many in the Party I have worked for for more than four decades do not want me to be their candidate."   He cited 200,000 Pennsylvanians switching to the Democratic Party and his desire to adhere to principle, but the real reason he switched was political survival.  President Obama immediately embraced him as a Democrat, and that will assure Mr. Specter's reelection as a Democrat in 2010.

It was no secret that soon after last November's Democratic election victory, Vice President-elect Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid quietly approached the few remaining Senate Republican moderates to see if they could be enticed to switch parties.  Included were Senators Specter (PA), Snowe (ME), Collins (ME), and Voinovitch (OH).  That none switched reflected the high cost of switching parties.

This morning, The New York Times published an op-ed by Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) expressing regret that Republican conservatives had driven Specter from the party, just as they had pushed Vermont Republican Jim Jeffords out eight years ago.  Snowe said, "...without question, we cannot prevail as a party without conservatives. But it is equally certain we cannot prevail in the future without moderates."  It's ironic that Senator Specter's Republican primary opponent, Pat Toomey, is the past head of the Club For Growth, a conservative Republican political action committee that funds opponents against Republican moderates to keep them in line.  Pushing Specter to the Democrats has had the opposite effect and dooms Toomey to defeat in 2010.

My father is a New England Republican, but he had to switch to the Democratic Party long ago.  I vividly remember him telling me as a young boy, "Your mother and I tried to be Republicans, but they didn't want us."

This is good news for Senate Democrats, but not as good as you might expect.  Specter vowed not to be "an automatic 60th vote."  He will make an important difference in moving health care reform, immigration reform, and middle class tax cuts (He was one of three Senate Republicans, along with Snowe and Collins, to vote for President Obama's stimulus bill this year.), but he won't go along with Check Card union election legislation or energy legislation that hurts Pennsylvania coal.

In war and in politics, victory often depends upon mistakes by the other side.