Specter claimed it was philosophical--and pointed his finger of blame at Republicans all over America for his defection to the Democrats. He told us all to go jump in the lake today.
I'm sorry, but I don't believe a word he said.
Arlen Specter committed a purely political and self-serving act today. He simply believes he has a better chance of saving his political hide and his job as a Democrat. He loves the title of Senator more than he loves the party--and the principles--that elected him and nurtured him.
I'm sorry, but I don't believe a word he said.
Arlen Specter committed a purely political and self-serving act today. He simply believes he has a better chance of saving his political hide and his job as a Democrat. He loves the title of Senator more than he loves the party--and the principles--that elected him and nurtured him.
OK, that's all well and good. If you looked at the latest poll numbers, Specter was losing significantly to his Republican primary challenger (lagging by 21% according to this poll), so you can certainly see an element of opportunism here. However, Steele goes on to say this:
Facing defeat in Pennsylvania's 2010 Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record, and an end to his 30 year career in the U.S. Senate, he has peddled his services--and his vote--to the leftist Obama Democrats who aim to remake America with their leftist plan.
Huh? Let me see if I've got this right. Steele says that Specter's claim that he is more ideologically a Democrat is crap. He was going to lose in the primary because of his left-wing voting record. Anybody else see the contradiction here? If he has a left-wing voting record, isn't that pretty much absolute proof that he is ideologically more a Democrat than a Republican?
Of course, I don't believe that he has a "left-wing" voting record. He has pretty much been a right-centrist for most of his career (and here are the numbers to back that up). As such, this probably isn't as much of a game-changer as it appears to be on the surface. Specter was one of the potential Republicans that the Democrats could swing to their side in legislation (as they did with the stimulus vote) and I believe that's still primarily where he will be. The idea that he will now blindly back the Democratic party on every issue is unfounded. The Republicans should now view him as someone that they potentially can pick off to stop legislation. To that end, it's probably not the best of ideas to be trashing him all over the place in the media.
For the next post, I'm going to do something a little different. Or, rather, I won't be doing anything at all. We will have a first here on Better Than Life: a guest blogger! The inimitable Joe Mays will be contributing a post. Look for that on Friday.
Finally, on a personal note Christy had her 20-week ultrasound today. Most importantly, we found out that the baby is developing right on schedule and everything looks healthy and great! Of most interest to everyone else, we also found out the sex of the soon-to-be-newest Delaney! I have agreed to let my wife break that story, so (if you don't have it bookmarked already) head on over to Christy's blog for the big news!
4 comments:
No, wait, he's going to be blindly Democrat, and that 60 number (eventually) will be impenetrable!
Except the first vote since his "defection" he voted (along with a handful of other democrats) with the Republicans (on the non-binding budget resolution.)
He started his life as a Democrat, then a Republican, now a Democrat again. You know what he is? He's an independent that knows he can't get elected in PA without party affiliation. None of this is altogether shocking. It is not the end of the world, and it is not the game changer the news networks made it out to be.
I totally agree with your comments about voting along on party lines. Just because you happen to have an (R) or a (D) after your name does not mean that you blindly follow the party on all vote. Or at least that's what I hope it means. Sadly, that's probably not the case most of the time.
On a related note, that's why I originally liked John McCain. He seemed like a smart guy who wasn't afraid to go against his party when he though they were wrong. During the campaign I feel like he sold out a bit in order to win the conservative vote, and I lost some respect for him. Especially when he chose Sarah Palin as a running mate. But I'm sure you blogged about that extensively. (Sorry I'm a little late to the game... Becky called me and told me I needed to read your blog more. So here I am!! And good job, by the way. You are smart.) =)
Oh, and I have another trip to China coming up for work so I might have some comments on that if you're so inclined to blog about it.
Ooh, yeah, I'd be interested in a China report, Laura. On Charlie Rose the other night he had this Chinese scholar or businessman or diplomat or something (sorry, I missed the first part of the episode where they said). The guy was throwing around the word democracy, how China wants democracy, they're moving toward democracy, really, they're practically a democracy already!, blah blah. And Charlie interrupted him and said--"Wait. What do you mean when you say democracy?" And the guy clarified that democracy was letting the people have their voices heard. But when Charlie pressed him it became obvious that in his mind, this "democracy" would still be a non-elected monarchy. Which I just found that really interesting, in that (at least in his case), maybe something got lost in the translation as to what exactly democracy was. Charlie and the Chinese dude also clearly had different impressions of how extensive and appropriate censorship was. Him: "Only a very small minority of websites are censored, the ones that people shouldn't be looking at anyway... no one is restricted." Charlie just sort of kept quiet.
John, hey, your blog is languishing! Are you being a hit and run blogger?
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