Arlen Specter decided he wanted another term

I flip past the talk radio circuit to hear the big word on today’s events in the Big Donkey — Elephant Game.  They accuse Arlen Specter of political expedency.  Arlen Specter said as much in his press conference today:
“I found that the prospects for winning the Republican primary were bleak. I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. Not prepared to have that record decided by that jury.”

It was hard not to marvel at Arlen Specter’s precarious situation, which I did here.  Since then, things became worse for the man electorally.  Over the weekend, he looked at his poll numbers and saw that the amazingly shrunk Republican Party of Pennsylvania had polled him to a 21 point defeat against Pat Toomey — a real victory for the guy that start the bottom row of this item.  Grover Norquist has flexed his muscles.  Why has the Republican Party of Pennsylvania shrunk?, you may ask.  Look at the comments section at the various news-sites, and you will see some hilarious explanations.

“Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats.”
Could he really be this stupid not to have heard of Operation Chaos??
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/politics/15960382/detail.html
“By some estimates, hundreds of Republicans switched parties to keep the feud going between Clinton and Obama.”
http://www1.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/113-04232008-1523358.html
Posted by: truthmattersfa | April 28, 2009 12:17 PM

Perhaps I’m as Irony-Deficit as the Conservative believers in Stephen Colbert (Note: this study requires you to create a flow-chat), but if not I have to point out the math problem of the explanation.  “More than 200,000” is, technically, “hundreds”, but by this point you tend to explain the number in terms of hundreds of thousands.  It’s a joke, right?

Okay.  Two more thoughts from the commenters of big time news entities.  The first one:

Does this really mattter? The two parties are are two wings of the same bird, pushing the same agenda … destruction of our rights and enslavement of the American people. Politics is nothing but the slight of hand a magician uses to distract you while a trick is executed.

Run of the mill comment, that.  And then there’s this assessment:

WOOOOO! DEMOCRATS ARE INVINCIBLE!
— Thomas Coppola

Huh.

Okay.  Some historical perspective on party switiching is due.  Wikipedia has a list of party switchers, and for the sake of finding a perspective it is best to take a gander at the cases where a Democra switched to the Republican.

You will recognize a great deal of the names of the last half of the twentieth century, as the Solid South opened up, split against the the national Democratic Party.  People like Ronald Reagan, This wikipedia list serves as a history of the partisan transformation of the South, and then the regionalization of the Republican Party.  Too bad the Democrats didn’t follow the advice of Zell Miller in heading this off , eh?  More impressively, is the flood of Louisianans and Texans and South Carolinans switching after the Republican landslides of 1980, 1984, and 1994.  They kept their jobs and didn’t miss a beat.

Whither the two parties from here?  I don’t know.  Didn’t you see that comment about all this being a sham?  Like it or not, Obama’s full fledged support assures that Specter is going to be re-elected Senator — meaning all you liberals have to hope his EFCA change of heart was a sham in pursuit of beating Toomey and his statements today are just a means of not embarrassing himself. 

One Response to “Arlen Specter decided he wanted another term”

  1. Justin Says:

    On Youtube:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2q7hei3T3E

    Good fodder for a Democratic primary contestant, I presume.

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