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Sen. Specter goes to the dark side!
- Thread starter desertoasis
- Start date
MINDBLOWING!
Big Biff
Got Em
Ha! Ask Harry Reid that question. Ask any Senator on both sides of the isle that serve more that a few terms.
But I would be hard pressed to find any politician that loves their seat more than Specter. Most of you may not remember how legitimately hardcore Specter was in 2005 when he was getting chemotherapy and still managing to make it to the floor every day during treatment to vote. Chemo is NOT pretty. He scheduled his treatments early in the morning and would debate by afternoon. He beat the cancer and never resigned.
Does anybody remember this?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-specter-jeffords29-2009apr29,0,2430682.story
The hypocrisy is the part that really makes me laugh/cry
But hey, if he loves the job enough to stick around during chemo at 70+ years, who are we to say anything? (rhetorical question)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-specter-jeffords29-2009apr29,0,2430682.story
The hypocrisy is the part that really makes me laugh/cry
But hey, if he loves the job enough to stick around during chemo at 70+ years, who are we to say anything? (rhetorical question)
Just another reason why you should vote for the person, not the party.
1) Senator Specter owes me nothing so the point is pretty pointless. I'm just bored.
2) Senators should have loyalty to their own principles and beliefs. Therefore, constituents would easily be able to support the candidate with similar principles and beliefs and a state would have senators and congressmen who looked roughly like the constituency of a state. Unfortunately, such is not the case. It's whoever can spit the best game at the right people at the right time. Senator Specter is changing parties which makes it look like he's changing platforms which means he's not loyal to anything but his paycheck and power. He can't imagine something as natural as losing to someone that the Republican voters like better. After all, who cares about them? He just wants to save his own bacon by any means necessary.
Term limits prevent any of this discusison from taking place. It lets elected officials swing for the fences based on what they and their constituency believe rather than making major decisions based solely on keeping their job.
FWIW, I haven't brought up his switch's implication in the Senate fillibuster scenarios because I dont want to look like a person who's simply mad because he's a Republican who didnt get his way. I'm way above that.
2) Senators should have loyalty to their own principles and beliefs. Therefore, constituents would easily be able to support the candidate with similar principles and beliefs and a state would have senators and congressmen who looked roughly like the constituency of a state. Unfortunately, such is not the case. It's whoever can spit the best game at the right people at the right time. Senator Specter is changing parties which makes it look like he's changing platforms which means he's not loyal to anything but his paycheck and power. He can't imagine something as natural as losing to someone that the Republican voters like better. After all, who cares about them? He just wants to save his own bacon by any means necessary.
Term limits prevent any of this discusison from taking place. It lets elected officials swing for the fences based on what they and their constituency believe rather than making major decisions based solely on keeping their job.
FWIW, I haven't brought up his switch's implication in the Senate fillibuster scenarios because I dont want to look like a person who's simply mad because he's a Republican who didnt get his way. I'm way above that.
This is only a midly related question.
Is it EVER ok for a politician to come to a change of mind or heart without being a flip-flopper?
It's one thing to chase votes, but I feel like "the system," needing to protect against that, is may be too critical of people who DO believe they are better serving their constituents by voting differently than they had previously.
Is it EVER ok for a politician to come to a change of mind or heart without being a flip-flopper?
It's one thing to chase votes, but I feel like "the system," needing to protect against that, is may be too critical of people who DO believe they are better serving their constituents by voting differently than they had previously.
Herc and Renegade need to step back and reexamine this. I'd like some proof the Republican party is getting more conservative. Take a look at the party platforms over the years. There is little movement the GOP in the last several years. If the GOP does not change it's positions on key fundamental issues to align with a new and probably temporary shift in any given political landscape, it is somehow getting more conservative? You have that backwards. As to the view that the GOP has been marginalizing more moderate members, not so either. Rick Santorum, a real conservative essentially got Specter elected last time. McCain has lots of support from members more to the right then him. AZ can't get a real GOP challenger because the party supports McCain regardless of his less then reliable support on some issues. Both parties look to put their people in congress. They generally support the strongest candidate in the primary and regardless of who wins, supports their party candidate in the general. Any differences from moderate to solid DEM or GOP is worked out on a cases by case basis in caucus once elected. The GOP did nothing to send Specter to the DEMs. They knew it would help shift control of the Senate. They wanted him to stay! He left the GOP because of a shift demographics and party registration in his state. Nothing more.
Yes, exactly. Obviously Congressmen aren't about to vote themselves out of office. The alternative, though, might be even tougher (3/4 of state legislatures, I believe).
Not really the same thing, to be fair.
Back then, he opposed the switch because it caused a switch in the party of majority in the middle of a session so it completely screwed up the allocation of titles and places on committees.
This time that's not the case.
The similarity between both situations, though, is that he was being completely self-serving both times.
I seem to recall them being far more conservative in the mid-90s (but I wasn't watching a lot of CNN back then).
I wouldn't say more conservative - but rather, more regionalized and more, um, churchy. ("Religious" isn't the word.) I'd posit that this is coming from the country moving past the 1994-era GOP.
Ah um, OK. I don't know what you mean by more regionalized. Do you mean that they are intentionally restricting themselves to certain regions or that they are mostly strong in certain regions? Because if it is the later, that would 1) be true of the DEMs as well, ie NE US and 2) not a sign of a more conservative GOP but one that has held it's place while some changes have occurred in parts of the country that once were fairly reliable GOP.
I don't know the significance of 1994 in this context, but as to the churchy part, I see it this way. The GOP has always held firm "churchy" values. But they were not articulated so much because they were not viewed as threatened. The predominate plank of the party until the early '90s was national defense, the commies being the biggest threat to the US, including the churchy stuff. With the cold war won and serious assults waged against those "churchy" things, the social issues simply came to the forefront as a natural course of debate. You could argue who fired the first shot across the bow. But I suspect that if the GOP didn't see the threat to their tradtional values increasing over the last 20 years, supporters of the "churchy" values would be, well, quite as church mice.
Big Biff
Got Em
Term Limits... Hogwash... USMarineMike your thoughts are so 1945...
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=hj111-5
Obviously we need someone to lead us through this dark era.
CHANGE.... as in the 22nd amendment, because sometimes 8 years just isn't enough
Yes we can
It's got no cosponsors, and it's a tin-foil hat's dream... So why do they do it???
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=hj111-5
Obviously we need someone to lead us through this dark era.
CHANGE.... as in the 22nd amendment, because sometimes 8 years just isn't enough
Yes we can
It's got no cosponsors, and it's a tin-foil hat's dream... So why do they do it???
But congressional term limits do have wide and strong support among the electorate.
Actually, you are probably correct in the platform not changing much, except the GOP has gotten in bed with the religious fundamentalists (which contributed to it getting the White House in 2000 and 2004) and they have driven the agenda in the last decade. My choice of words should probably be more "homogenized". There are only two moderates left in the Senate and they are both women from Maine (remember the moderates that recently departed: Lincoln Chafee and Chuck Hagel come quickly to mind). In fact my earlier point about moderates being marginalized was actually a paraphrase of Sen Olympia Snowe; she in fact wrote an op-ed in the Times discussing how difficult it is to be a moderate these days. Your right on the GOP sending Santorum to help out Specter, but I'm sure if they had someone else waiting in the wings for the primary that would have been the case. As for them wanting to keep him; the party has an odd way of showing it:
- Chairman Michael Steele indicates is open to punishing Specter in the wake of his vote on the stimulus package:"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocqIEAaPVok&eurl=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/24/michael-steele-open-to-pu_n_169550.html&feature=player_embedded"] [/URL]
-Chairman Steele indicated on a 25 Feb appearance on Morning Joe that the GOP may not support Specter in the primary.
I don't disagree that he switched because of lessening support in the GOP (he made plenty on the right unhappy w/ the Stimulus), but that isn't the only narrative. His moderate voting record made him persona non grata in his party; if he was an average conservative Republican it is doubtful he would be in the position he was in with serious challenges from Toomey in the primary. Both of these things are not exclusive, though some would beg to differ.
Why do you say that. Because Bush was a public man of faith? Jimmy Carter was just as openly religious. Maybe you can give me an example of how religious fundamentalists has driven the agenda. Let's see, social security reform was one of the first things Bush tackled. No religious influence there. No Child Left Behind, nope, no religion there. Explosive growth in spending on Farm and Transportation Bills, no evil church goers there. Billions spent on AIDS in Africa, perhaps a moral play but no overt pressure form the usual suspect from the religious right. Afghanistan, Iraq, no Christian fundamentalists finger prints there. If you want to believe the conspiracy theorist that was all Jewish neocons acting the the interests of Israel, not the Moral Majority or Family Research Council. There was the Faith Based Institutive. Never made many headlines out side of the title. That White House Office is so offensive Mr. Obama is even KEEPING it. I suppose you can trot out stem cell research, but it isn't like there isn't a real ethical debate over that above and beyond religion. Oh, and the there is the elephant in the room, abortion. Bush restricted abortion access derived from Federal Funds. Again, not a position outside the main stream (polls support restrictions on abortion), therefore hardly a fundamentalist Christian right wing play, just politics and personal morality. It is OK to vote you conscience on a stimulus bill and you are a hero, a maverick. But vote your conscience on abortion and stem cells and you are a ignorant religious hick.
We might agree here, but only as represented by elected officials. Some moderates have left. All had their own reasons and usually it was local politics, not the Party pushing them out. Party politics is no more homogenized then 20 years ago.
She is a cry baby. This talk about how regionalized the GOP is by her and others is BS. She would not be in Congress as a Republican if it were not for regionalized GOP politics. She would NEVER be elected on a nation wide GOP ballot. So she has positions that are not held by many Republicans. Bid deal. Her constituents apparently don't mind. She voted for the wasteful stimulus bill and wasn't reprimanded. And neither was Specter. She complains about how hard it is to be a Republican moderate, but she votes her own way and still has her committee positions, support in primary's and spends party money in her general elections. Does she want a hug from Steele or Limbaugh? Cry baby!!
Excuse me! Pat Toomey anyone? Santorum got Specter elected by dissing Toomey. Toomey would have won the primary with Santorum support and had a good shot at in the general.
The party never did anything to Specter or anyone else who voted for that piece of crap legislation. As to not supporting him in the upcoming primary, no decision had been made. But if they didn't it was because he is polling at a 3-1 loss to his challenger and it would have been a waste of time and money to support him.
Well duh! If he was an average conservative republican Toomey would not have a voice. There would be no reason for a more conservative Toomey. Specter is another cry baby that is trying desperately to hold on to his power and prestige. He is 79, and been sick. He could have given it the old college try and simply retired to the good life if he lost the primary. But a "D" means more power and a cake walk next election.
Before anyone wants to make another argument about how far right the GOP has gone, you might want to remember that the GOP elected the quintessential moderate/maverick republican for their presidential candidate when there were no less then 3 other more conservative candidates to chose from. Splain that to me.