13 Years Too Late, Arlen

So Arlen Specter lost in his bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate tonight. He switched from the Republican to the Democratic party in order to stay in office, and it didn't work. He lost the Democratic primary. It's a big political story nationwide, in part because he's been in the Senate for 30 years. It's an interesting story because I've always felt he should have switched parties long before he finally did.

On March 31, 1995, Specter announced that he was running for the Republican presidential nomination in the 1996 elections. According to Wikipedia:

He entered the race claiming his party needed a candidate who did not conform to the stereotypical religious conservative image. He was critical of Patrick J. Buchanan, Pat Robertson and Ralph E. Reed, Jr., saying all three were far too conservative. "Neither this nation nor this party can afford a Republican candidate so captive to the demands of the intolerant right that we end up re-electing a President of the incompetent left."

Before even one primary was held in 1996, Specter dropped out of the race. The Republican party, becoming increasingly controlled by the ultra-right, ultra-religious faction that now is more correctly referred to as the American Taliban, was never going to vote for Specter in the primaries, which tend to draw out the more hard-line voter than the general elections.
In Pennsylvania primaries, for example, if you're a Democrat you can't vote for Republican candidates and vice versa. If you're a registered independent or third-party member you're out of luck completely, except for ballot questions. So people who might gravitate towards a "moderate" Republican aren't likely to be able to choose that candidate in a primary.

Specter stayed on in the Senate. In his Senate career he's shown an uncanny knack for tailoring his positions based on what type of voters he felt he needed. Sometimes he angered conservatives, sometimes he upset liberals. One might call it flip-flopping. Many have called it that, actually, but Specter kept winning re-election.

However, in case you haven't noticed, the GOP has only gotten worse over the years, as the American Taliban has been joined by the racist birthers and teabaggers. And in 2004 Specter barely won the GOP primary over one of these ultra-right candidates, Pat Toomey. With Toomey running again this year, Arlen Specter saw the writing on the wall and switched to the Democratic party in April 2009.

This move was hailed by President Obama and other Democratic leaders because it helped give the Democrats a 60-member Senate caucus, including the two independents. This was supposed to prevent the GOP from filibusters blocking legislation on all sorts of initiatives. In reality, it meant little. The 40 Republicans stayed firm in their denial of anything worthwhile that Obama wanted, while the Democrats squabbled and bungled, and then some guy who posed nude in Cosmopolitan won the election to replace Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts and the GOP got back that 41st member anyway.

So in order to win this time, Arlen Specter switched to the Democratic party and, needless to say, his voting record since then has been very strongly with the Democrats. But as much as the party tried to give him a clean shot in the 2010 primary, he had a challenger -- Joe Sestak, a retired Navy Rear Admiral and Director for Defense Policy on the National Security Council during the Clinton presidency who won election to the House of Representatives in 2006 in a district that had only elected two Democrats since the Civil War.

That meant that Arlen Specter, instead of having to win over enough hard-line Republican voters, had to win over hard-line Democratic voters -- such as myself. I've made no bones about it: unless a miracle occurs and the GOP throws off the shackles of the American Taliban and the other nuts, no Republican will ever get my vote again. So Arlen Specter had to win over people like me.

Now, let's go back to 1995, just after Newt Gingrich took a contract out on America and the GOP won control of Congress. There was the government shutdown of 1995, among other things, and that was pretty much the genesis of my anti-GOP stance...not that I've ever been all that moderate, but there were occasions where I voted for a Republican. It was over by 1995, though. And my motivations were not that different than Arlen Specter's motivation for running for President. Neither of us wanted the "intolerant right" to gain power.

However, I put my money (i.e. votes) where my mouth is. Arlen Specter did not. If he had switched parties back in January 1996 instead of April 2009, he'd have won a lot of respect from me. After all, he wanted to provide a moderate alternative for the GOP and their response was pretty much "go to hell." Instead, he stayed a Republican and, outside of some of his votes in the Senate, stayed loyal to the party and supported some truly despicable GOP politicians over the years. Rick Santorum. George W. Bush. Sarah Palin. Members of that same "intolerant right" that Specter spoke out against.

He never had a chance. Not with me, and not in this election.