Alan Spector, Republican US Senator for Pennsylvania, Switches to the Democrats

What fun is life if everybody agrees with you anyway?

Everyone needs a good counter with different views and opinions to help the process of fleshing out good and thoughtful opinions that can withstand some scrutiny.

I figured I would just post this here instead of a new thread:

GOP Confronts Its Future Viability​

WASHINGTON -- Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter's decision to become a Democrat underscores his former party's political downward spiral.

In losing control of the House and Senate over the past four years, congressional Republicans have also lost much of their ideological and geographic diversity -- raising questions about the GOP's viability as a national party. The party has suffered in particular in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, and among moderates.

"We have to broaden the party," said Sen. Lindsay Graham (R., S.C.) Tuesday. "We have to find places in the party for people who couldn't win in South Carolina," he added, vowing to help recruit moderates back into the Republican fold. "I'm a right-of-center guy, but ideological purity is not going to win the day."

Senate Republican leaders denied they had slipped into the danger zone. "I believe that we will be able to regain our status as a national party by being competitive nationally, as we should be," said Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), who runs the Senate campaign operation for Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) rejected the idea that moderates are not welcome among Senate Republicans, who now total 40. But moderate ranks have dwindled sharply -- by some counts down to two: Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. "We have moderates in our conference who have an enormous amount of influence," Mr. McConnell said.

After Mr. Specter's departure, questions loom about whether Sens. Collins and Snowe might also switch parties. Both said they intend to remain Republicans. But Sen. Snowe offered a strong warning to her GOP colleagues, arguing the party needs "to be more broadly inclusive" and that many voters are "alienated and disaffected" with the images and agenda put forward.

In his post-2008 analysis, veteran election expert Curtis Gans calculated that the Democratic Party scored gains in every geographic region in the country, most notably in the South and Mountain West, effectively the last Republican strongholds on the political map.

"The GOP is out of contention in New England and the West. It is getting out of contention in the mid-Atlantic states and the industrial Midwest, its bases of former support in the farm Midwest, Mountain States and South are eroding," he wrote in his December report for American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate.

Mr. Gans calculates that the Republican Party currently enjoys a "durable advantage" in just 10 states: Idaho, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas. Currently, the Republican Party controls none of the U.S. House districts in the six states that make up New England. In New York State, Republicans now control just three districts, compared with 13 just three years ago.

David Wasserman of the non-partisan Cook Political Report says the party is "deeply divided" between centrists and traditional conservatives.

"You have some Republicans who believe that the course back is to amplify their conservative message and not to alter it, and then you have those who want to alter and not amplify," he said.

Mr. Wasserman noted that GOP moderates can still run and win in Democratic-leaning states -- citing the 2008 victories of Erik Paulsen in Minnesota and Leonard Lance of New Jersey. Part of the problem Republicans face now is convincing prospective candidates to run for office when there's little hope on the immediate horizon of serving in the majority. source​

 

I'm actually not too pleased about the idea of Spector instead of a real liberal Democrat coming out of Pennsylvania in 2010 (and obviously the nutter that would have beaten Spector in the Republican primary would have got demolished in the general election by a real Democrat.) But it's a bit of a give & take. The positives now may outweigh the negative later.

 

I agree I don't think it will and actually hope the Republican party never does go away completely.

If it did we (Dems) would be in danger of suffering the same fate.... letting the fringe of our party take over.

We need the Repubs for balance. I think they're doing their job wonderfully right now. They're criticizing the Democrats every move and "keeping us honest".

And more importantly, if there were no repubs the far left democrats would have no one to fight against but moderate democrats. And by far left I mean the ones that want to take away our weapons (how the hell did we let that become a liberal issue anyway?) and guarantee tax credits for people who don't pay taxes and provide indefinite financial support to people who aren't even looking for a job or at a minimum trying to get the education or training to get one.

That would suck for us all.

 

I find your post an interesting dichotomy against the Wall St. Journal article posted earlier. According to the article, the Republican Party is troubled because of it's deep divide between the moderates and the far right. According to your post, you want the Republicans around to keep the far left from taking the party away from the moderate Democrats. Yet by all accounts, the Democratic party is not divided in the slightest, so I ask you in your opinion, who is having their way in the Democratic party right now?

 

I have both a question and an answer...

"by all accounts"? Seriously? Every last account? Limited reading sources much? Sure they united behind the President just after the election, but Pelosi and Obama are not friends.

In answer to who's in charge. Well, unless you just woke up from a 2 year sleep and have no idea where you are or why you're posting in this forum I have to assume that was a joke? The moderate Democrats are. If the far left liberals were Obama would have been campaigning on opening free gay marriage and abortions clinics at your local city hall for everyone!

You guys have really got to make up your minds and decide who you are going to blame. It's been entertaining watching you run around trying to find a Democrat to demonize since Obama is a little bullet proof right now with his approval ratings. But hsi agenda is not the far left liberal agenda. It's the Obama agenda.

I'm sure you'll make some transparent attempt hold up Nancy Pelosi and say "hey she's the majority leader". But wait... no... no...... no that would clearly demonstrate that you don't have more than a rudimentary understanding of how our government works, so you couldn't do that. So I guess I'll eagerly await your response and hope you go there

 

Wow. Awful touchy. My question was one of opinion. I have mine, you have yours. Do you have any links to back up your claim that the President and Mrs. Pelosi are not friends?

 

The key for Spector was the switch of 200,000 republicans to the democratic party to vote for Hillary Clinton in last years presidential primary.

Spector's vote for the $1 trillion stimulus also meant that he would be targeted in the republican senate primary.

1st quarter GDP comes out today and it could be ugly. The trillion stimulus was really short on infrastructure projects and it was packed with pork. Some of the spending is for social programs that wouldn't be spend until 2010.

 

@Bogart: Spector clearly stated two things:

1. He moved to the Dems because of personal political opportunity. He saw no chance getting reelected in the GOP primary....let alone having a chance in the general election.

2. The GOP is changing dramatically. It has no room for moderate opinions.

The GOP is trending ever more conservative. It is also losing popularity among the greater American public. It is becoming a minority party....by its own volition and changing into an extremist party with a narrow platform.


1st Qtr GDP is very ugly. The economy is shrinking. Got any answers?

Stimulus as passed is a mixed bag. Some infrastructure and some very questionable spending. Meanwhile....in a way so what....the world economy is shrinking as a result of the US caused recession which has affected the entire world.

After doing some reading on the Japanese efforts at stimulus over the 1990's and 2000's....I have a very mixed reading of its results. The Japanese economy stayed stagnant...yet it remained the world's 2nd largest economy. Infrastructure might have seen too much investment....social investment might not have been enough.

Relatively speaking the US has lots of very old very cr@ppy outdated infrastructure...i.e..the New York region. It takes billions upon billions just to maintain tons of cr@ppy infrastructure. I understand the NY subway system, and the long distance commuter lines are facing epic problems. It is the most critical, most used, most important mass transit/commuting system in the nation.

Look I have no great solutions. Crossing fingers is as good as it might get. The recession of the late 80's early 90's....took lots of time to pull out of the financial institution and overall economic disaster that hit.

On the other hand the 90's saw the maturation of a change from large and mega computers into pcs/laptops/personal computing....and a mega change in telecommunications...pretty much as a result of breaking up AT&T and spurring competition and then growth in the entire telecom industry. That telecom process started a decade earlier.

The growth of those 2 industries spurred great growth thru the latter part of the 90's IMHO....and worked to speed up recovery from the earlier financial institution induced recession.

Hopefully some things....such as ever greater and greater commerce spurred by the web...or some other things serve as economic activity inducements for this economy and the rest of the world.

 

Extremist republicans lol. This is the doing of the radical left. If Obama would have "stayed to the center" like the media told us he would (they did that so the dumb swing voters would blindly vote him in) the republicans most likely wouldn't be reacting like they are. They're continually being discounted, misrepresented and screwed over time and time again. Thank you John McCain.

Oh i'm practically salivating over this though, let both sides get radicalized for all I care, it can only be to my benefit in the end. When even one side becomes disillusioned by our current system, the house of cards must fall and the power will be fully restored to the individual as it once was. The more Obama leans to the left, the more the right reacts, and the more desperate everyone is for answers.

 

This is truly bizzarre thinking.

Obama came to power as the majority shifted from right to left...the big changes occurring in the middle.

Somehow in those changes the bizzarro concepts of extreme libertarianism are so neglected by a huge majority...even in the face of the greatest visibility libertarianism ever had, by virtue of Ron Paul's highly visable but largely ignored campaign.

Since 1980 almost 20 members of Congress have shifted parties, Spector being the latest, and, during that time period, in the minority over the past 29 years....as most shifted from Democrat to Republican.

As in most cases the party the member of Congress joined didn't win the congressperson....the extremist and narrowness of the party he/she left lost the congressperson.

Spector acknowledged he was facing a losing cause in the GOP primary. Its startling to think that he acknowledges more chances at keeping his seat by having a chance to campaign to the entire state versus only campaigning at a diminishing radical extreme minority in the GOP primary.

 

Such Idealisim. I love it. You are truly the front line of the movement.

This whole Specter thing bothers me. Its not like hes going to vote any differently, which makes him ideologically unreliable. Should he win the Democratic primary, he will likely displace someone to the left of him. It was better off for us to have him as a Republican, basically leaving us a quasi liberal fail safe in the event the Democrats loose the seat. At the end of the day, its probably best for the party if his campaign dies a traitors death.

All primary campaigns cater to the extreme within that party. Now he will have to prove his leftist credentials to people like me, an equally uphill battle.

 

what sickness....that stupid playoff on your name does you proud. Are you the same guy who pulled this twisted stuff once before...or is this a typical ploy by whack jobs from the far right?

Do you guys do this all the time? Again its no wonder the extreme rightist perspective continues to lose people.

 

Good god man, you really don't get it. You're digging your own grave and it's making me laugh.

By the way, the "extremist right" is growing, not losing anyone. It is fueled mainly by dipshits like our president who personally go after radio hosts and consequently double their audience. Oh the juicy flames of extremism, keep fanning the extremist language, this fire needs to get out of control!

 

It's not really bizarre when you look at motivations though. Both the Republicans and Independents demonstrate on a daily basis here in the forum that they'd like nothing better than to see Obama fail at everything he does no matter the consequences in order to save their own party.

No matter how you spin it, when the economy recovers under Obama's first term it is just not a going to be a good thing for them. You think his approval ratings are good now, wait until he actually starts producing results.

You don't have to take my word for it. I quick google search of the top and even not so well known conservative blogs will show it's clear that a failed Obama Presidency even remotely close to as bad as George Bush's is pretty much their only hope at this point.

 

going after rush was a good idea. as a result of that give and take it has became obvious that rush is the leader of the gop and that isolated the paliban and the ditto heads even more than before.

 

Specter has always been known as the guy that blows with the wind. The warren commission absolutely loved his backing of the magic bullet theory. Typical politician out for number 1.

 

Good idea for who, me?

Obama is clearly not a chess player, there are some pieces on the board so to speak that will only come back to bite in later moves. Underrepresented conservatism + hardcore progressive admin. = backlash.

Add to the equation the funny liberals like earlpearl who discount conservative interests ("extremist whackjobs") and further agitating events like Benedict Arlen Specter's switch.

Democrats have the illusion of great power right now, and they just LOVE power. Their "progressive" nature will cause them to be aggressive and "govern with iron fist!". Kind of reminds me of the Reconstruction era, but this time, as Glenn Beck says, we surround them.

 

first of all to call the republicans in the extreeeeme right conservative is a falasy in itself. conservatisim is about small govt and these people were all about big and intrusive govt and approved of everything from more spending to spying on americans and a lot of other intrusive laws. the party of joe the plumber and palin are neither conservative nor have any ideas.
also in chess sometimes you sacrifice your queen to get a bishop or whatever if it can help myou mate your opponent so the pieces on the board are not important but the strategy is,
as far as the rush situation. by attacking rush and the reaction of the republican, it became obvious as to emptiness of the republican party of any true leader with courage and any one with ability to govern,and their lack of courage and conviction and ideas

 

Wait a minute, what is extreeeme right? Are you saying the phony republicans that approve of big government are part of the extreme right? How is that being right wing?

 

i am talking about the paliban and republicans in congress and leaders of the republican party. the people that are in control of the republican party