Arlen Specter

It’s tempting to venture into calling what may be happening to President Obama and the Democrats poetic justice, as more is revealed about the White House, Sestak, Clinton connection.

Clinton and Sestak

Republicans are calling for a special prosecutor to dig into the offering to Sestak of ‘an unpaid job’ as the head of a Presidential commission, if he’d drop his Senate bid in favor of Arlen Specter. The White House has worked quickly to distance the President from the possible backlash if, as some suggested, the law had been broken.

It might be noted here that Obama’s White House moved much faster covering Obama’s butt than they did responding to the disaster in the Gulf. Commission? More likely what he was offered was Secretary of the Navy. There are, of course, many vociferous denials coming from the left as they prepare to circle the wagons. Not the best move in an election year perhaps… sure to draw fire from Republicans and pointed questions from voters as well. What did you know and when did you know it?

The left excoriated George Bush unmercifully for years after nine eleven. The LSM (Lame Stream Media) is also falling all over themselves to minimize the impact of the Sestak story. But as we say in the industry, this story has legs and we haven’t seen or heard the last of it.

What we do know is that the call went out to Bill Clinton from Rahm Emanuel to ‘influence’ Joe Sestak, a sitting Representative, to drop his US Senate aspirations in favor of the Administration’s pick, Arlen Specter. Interfering with a candidate and promising favor, paid or not, is in violation of the statute. Can’t wait to see where this one goes….

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

Arlen Specter, he of many faces, is gone. His epitaph will be that he turned his back on his friends, only to turn his back on those friends… one too many times out there, Arlen. Arlen Specter is a victim of his own perfidy. There was a time that Specter could count on wide support. Voters turned on him. Republicans didn’t like him and Democrats didn’t trust him. The huge inner city voter turnout he was gambling on didn’t develop.

Arlen Specter

The ‘incumbent’ syndrome most certainly came into play here as the voters turned away from Specter, voting instead for former Admiral, Rep. Joe Sestak. Sestak now goes on to face Conservative Republican Pat Toomey in November.

Rand Paul, son of Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, won a walk-away victory in Kentucky against Republican Trey Grayson. Rand Paul was able to paint Grayson as the quintessential country club Republican. Paul proudly identifies himself as a ‘Tea Party’ member and they certainly came out for him in force.

The political gods have not been treating Barack Hussein Obama and the DeMarxist Congress very kindly. Blanche Lincoln has been forced into a runoff election with Arkansas Lt. Governor Bill Halter three weeks from now, and then the winner of that race will face Republican Representative John Boozman. Pre-election polling indicated that Boozman could beat either Lincoln or Halter in November. Democrat Mark Critz defeated Republican Tim Burns in pursuit of the late John Murtha’s Senate seat.

Hawaii’s special election is on May 22 and the Conservative Republican candidate Charles Djou looks to have a comfortable lead over both of his opponents in this winner-take-all special election. This was Obama’s home district. I’d give a lot to be a fly on the wall at some of the DeMarxist huddles that are undoubtedly taking place about now…

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

Yes, it’s going to be a cold lonely summer… Senator Bob Bennett R-Utah found out, and it didn’t have to go anywhere past the second ballot of the Utah State GOP delegation. Bennett was an eighteen year incumbent. The influence of the ‘Tea Party’ Patriots was definitely felt here.

Exit Stage LEFT

It’s going to be a very tough year on incumbents. It will be hard on Republicans, but it’s shaping up to be extremely difficult for our so-called ‘moderate’ Blue Dog Democrats… the ones who had an opportunity to stand up and be counted on the critical issues which came before them, but when the time came, voted against the American people.

All over the country races are shaping up to be a Demarxist debacle, the likes of which have never before been seen in American politics. We’ve been calling it the New American Revolution. That’s what it is. It’s the American people standing up to a rogue regime which threatens our livelihoods, our families, our property, our national security and our freedom.

A quick look at some of the other races is informative. Republican turned Democrat Arlen Specter looks to lose to Democrat Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania, proving that the Democrats didn’t want any more to do with him either. John Murtha’s Pennsylvania seat may be in jeopardy after being a Democratic mainstay for 35 years. Republican Tim Burns is in strong contention for Murtha’s Senate seat. Meanwhile, the Indiana Senate race looks to be another Republican victory in the making, with newly chosen Republican nominee Dan Coats at 51% to 36% for Democrat Brad Ellsworth, according to Rasmussen. West Virginia Democrat Representative Alan Mollohan is facing his first serious primary challenge in thirty years.

A major voting block of the Democratic party has now seriously split, with many American Jews reacting strongly to Obama’s worse than shabby treatment of Israel and his obviously anti-semitic leanings.

Along with Pennsylvania, there are three other states that have primaries on the 18th of May… Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon. None of these races look particularly encouraging for Democrats either. Yes, it’s going to be a very interesting year.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

Just got off the phone with my 85 year old Yellow Dog Democrat Aunt who lives in Pennsylvaina; she had the most priceless quote ever on Arlen Specter:

I've been voting against Arlen Specter for 30 years.  I see no reason to stop now.  I'm too old to start voting for Arlen Specter.

Go Sestak!!!

With the recent defection of Arlen Specter and the entry of Charlie Crist into the Florida Senate race, much has been recently made of an alleged split between moderate and conservative Republicans.  While I think there's some truth to this argument, I also think it misses the point.  The problem is that "Republican Moderate" is such a broad category that it doesn't mean anything.

With that in mind, I want to differentiate between two types of Republican Moderates.  For the sake of clarity, I'm going to define them as the "Rudy Giuliani Moderates" and the "Arlen Specter Moderates."

Who are they?!?

Rudy Giuliani -- These are the Republicans who are Conservative on most issues and have a few issues where they legtimately disagree with the Republican base.  In Rudy's case, he's GREAT on National Security, the Economy, Health Care, Education, Crime, and a whole host of other issues.  At the same time, there are a few issues where Rudy differs from the GOP mainstream: Life, Gun Control, and Cross Dressing.

Moderates like Rudy are our friends.  When people talk about a big tent, that's fine.  We need to be inclusive of people who are with us on most of the issues even when they differ on a few.  Reagan said it best when he said: "My 80% friend is not my 20% enemy."

Recruiting candidates who fall into the Rudy Giuliani mold who are well suited to a particular district or state is a essential.  We can't be excessively doctriaire in who we recruit.

(Author's Note: John McCain, Lindsay Grahmnesty, Mark Kirk, and Sheriff Dave Reichart all fit into this category.)

That said, there's another type of "moderate" candidate we need to avoid like the plague.

Arlen Specter -- These are "Republicans" who find it politically expedient to run for office with an R after their name and are nothing more than gloified prostitutes seeking power and personal aggandizement.  While Specter was a respectable Judiciary commitee chairman and backed most of Reagan's defense buildup in the 1980's that's the only useful thing he's ever done in the United States Senate.  Otherwise, he's been a thorn in the side of Conservative reform for the past three decades.  Beyond his vote for Porkulus, Specter led the Smear Campaign against Judge Robert Bork, and he sold his soul to the trial lawyer lobby over the asbestos bailout.  Unlike the Giuliani style moderates, who actually care about Public Affairs, people like Arlen Specter are in Politics to increase their personal power and will do or say whatever it takes to make that happen.

Arlen Specter style prostitutes shred our credibility and dilute our message.

(Author's Note: George Pataki, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Colin Powell all fit into this category.)

As I said several months ago: Apostates are O.K.; Grandstanding RINO's are not.

Thoughts/Suggestions?!?

Cahnman out.

Based on the Mortgage Cramdown vote, these Democrats are our best hope for beating ObamaCare.

1) Max Baucus (MT) - (406) 761-1574 - Senate Finance Committee Chair

2) Michael Bennet (CO) - (719) 328-1100

3) Robert Byrd (W. Va) - (304) 264-4626

4) Thomas Carper (DE) - (302) 856-7690

5) Byron Dorgan (ND) - (701) 852-0703

6) Tim Johnson (SD) - (605) 332-8896

7) Mary Landrieu (LA) - (337) 436-6650

8) Blanche Lincoln (AR) - (870)382-1023

9) Ben Nelson (NE) - (308) 631-7614

10) Mark Pryor (AR) - (501) 324-6336

11) Arlen Specter (PA) - 570-346-2006 - I Know; just think about how much fun it'll be when he stabs the Dems in the Back!!!

12) John Tester (MT) - (406) 365-2391

Honorable Mention - Evan Bayh (IN), Mark Begich (AK), Kent Conrad (ND), Bill Nelson (FL)

We can Beat this Thing!!!

I hope this helps.

Cahnman out.

It seems the choice for him turned out to be frying pan v. fire

It appears his understanding about retaining seniority apres switch was not shared by his new fellow caucus.

and after reviewing recent polls  (although I'm not that familiar with this one)  Michael Barone isn;t quite so sure than Specter is the general election lock he may have appeared to be on first blush. Looking at the general election, Barone concluded.

 it’s possible that a competent opponent who starts out little known but raises sufficient money to change that could sweep up the lion’s share of the undecided vote and make this a close race. Conceivably even a winning race, if the balance of partisan opinion changes over the next 18 months. 

There's some reason to believe this. Specter is obviously buoyed post shift by Obamamania, which is still regnant in PA---Q showed him @66% favorable. If this sinks, ebbing tides lower all boats,

Specter also is presently the "Philly candidate".  This poses two problems. He's probably close to his ceiling there already, but metro Philly only casts about 30% of the state's votes.  There's still enough votes elsewhere in the Commonwealth  for a Republican to fashion a victory.

Second, Specter's 2004 results against a Democrat from the Philly suburbs (Joe Hoeffle) lead me to wonder if a similarly situated Democrat (Sestak) could mess things up huge for Arlen in a Democrat primary. 

Specter lost the city of Philadelphia by 270,000 votes and won the suburbs by 145,000....barely winning Montgomery and Delaware. Specter's big wins that year were in smaller urban areas like Erie, Reading and Scranton who are not so predisposed to him of late. Specter may be feeling the effect of another demographic change---the city of Philadelphia is about 500,000 smaller than when Arlen started his  political career and the loss has been disproportionaly of blue collar whites enamored of moderate candidates as opposed to hard line partisan Democrats.

Will the Philly machine turn out black voters for Specter in a primary? It may depend on how fervent the President is in his support.

One thing from looking at the results from 2006 is it is hard to fathom even the relatively unknown Toomey starting off worse than Santorum ended up. It looks like we may have defined 41% as the hard GOP base in PA.

And I credit Specter's pollster , Glen Bolger, for confirming what I wrote. Specter dug his own hole with Republicans with the stimulus vote., crushing his job approval with Republicans by 30 points. 

"The most important number was the approval rating - it dropped from the 60s to 31" percent just in the last few months, Specter said.

But the stimulus vote was a "watershed," Specter said. "It all turned on that. The pollsters had never seen that kind of precipitous drop. It was stark"

 Pat Toomey just showed up after the hole was dug.

I suppose my question now is we might finally have a Republican party serious about fiscal conservatism. What are we going to do with it?  

===POSTSCRIPT===

I would be remiss in not linking to Dan McLaughlin's excellent RedState post that points out that while the GOP can certainly abide the "socially liberal but fiscally conservative" candidate, especially in Blue States. it's is sort of a condition precedent to be fiscally conservative in order to claim this status. The PA GOP could nominate Specter until his stimulus vote took the legs out of the equation, and by my math, even if the 200,000 "lost moderates" returned to the fold it would not have saved Specter from a primary defeat.

Sometimes, election years get focused on certain races to tell the story of the cycle. It is too early to tell what the stories of the next cycle will be, but here are two possibilities.

In Pennsylvania, recently re-minted Democrat Arlen Specter has said that he is not shifting his position on card-check, aka the Employee Forced (nee Free) Choice Act. SEIU and AFL-CIO are already pressuring Specter to cave by, among other things, encouraging Rep. Joe Sestak to run against him, in a race in which card-check would be a central debate.

Ironically, the 200,000 people that became Democrats, making Specter's GOP primary impossible, are likely Specter voters in a Democratic primary. As the Democrats have become more affluent, moderate tolerant, and less labor-dependent, the power of organized labor may not be so large.

What if the Democratic primary became a referendum on card-check for Democrats?  How important -- really -- is card check to Democrats? With Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel, etc., all weighing in on the anti-card-check side. Wouldn't that be funny. Wouldn't a Specter/card-check victory be a decisive defeat for the unions? This race could become nationalized in much the way that the Lieberman race was in 2006.

Similarly, I can see a fight in New Hampshire over gay marriage in the general. The legislature has passed easily reconcilable bills that legalize gay marriage legislatively. It is likely that the governor will neither sign nor veto them, bringing the law into effect.

But New Hampshire is different than Massachussets and Iowa, where gay marriage has been created by judicial fiat and seems unlikely to be reconsidered due to the ballot initiative processes. It is also different than neighboring Vermont, which just legalized gay marriage by legislative action. This is a dead issue in Vermont.

But you could imagine a battle in the general election in New Hampshire over gay marriage. Democrats had not controlled the state legislature since 1874, and some of these seats could swing back. After all, in 2006, we lost, as Time put it,  "91 state legislature seats, six of [our] 16 state senate seats and both [our] congressional seats". And gay marriage would undoubtedly play a role in a number of swing seats around the state and be a nationalized campaign. Money would flood in from around the country for both sides.

My gut is that gay marriage will not be a compelling issue in New Hampshire, but this will be the only serious opportunity for pro-traditional marriage forces to defend their position at the ballot box. They probably cannot afford to pass it up.

Aside from all the questions about the ability of the GOP to comeback and the future of the redistricting process, 2010 could be quite fascinating.

After Arlen Specter announced his plans to run as a Democrat in 2010, Gov. Ed Rendell stated: 

“Well, I think that Arlen will probably wind up running unopposed, or without a serious challenger… Everyone knows Arlen and I are personal friends, go back to when he hired me as an assistant district attorney without asking me what party I belonged to. I think every major Democrat is gonna be for Arlen.”  

I wondered at the time, could Rendell really deliver a free-ride to Arlen Specter.  Granted, Rendell is the most powerful Democrat in the State at this moment - so powerful that many Democrats were seriously hoping he would jump into the Democratic Primary to face Specter in the General. But with that no longer an option and Rendell being term-limited, how much influence could a lame-duck Governor have in a state where legislators carve out 30-year power bases. Case in point:

PA State Representative Mark Cohen (D-Philadelphia) is the Majority Caucus Chair, the third ranking leadership position in the Dem controlled State House;  he has been in office since 1974 and is an elected member of the PA Dem State Committee.  Cohen also understands new media - he has  posted to his own blog for several years, is a frequent contributor to DailyKos and Cohen’s facebook page boasts 2000+ followers.  His status updates are measured statements, so last night when he posted Arlen Specter had “jumped from the frying pan to very hot water”  and Democrats “continue to examine their options” I read it as a statement that Democratic leaders are not at all excited about a Specter candidacy - solid liberals distrust him as much as the conservative base in PA.

I e-mailed Cohen and asked him which candidates were still exploring options and he replied:

Democrats exploring Senate candidacies include Congressman Joe Sestack, Pittsburgh City Controller William Lamb, Allegheny County State Representative Bill Kortz, and former Constitution Center President Joe Torsella. Sestack, with at least $3.7 million on hand, and Torsella, with almost $600, 000 on hand, are likely the leading candidates of the bunch.

By contrast, Pat Toomey, whose recent candidacy forced Specter to defect, did not report 1st quarter numbers and likely hasn’t yet raised as much as the Democratic candidates named above.  Specter has $6.7 million on hand.

So Senator Specter finds himself in a familiar situation - looming on the horizon could be a formidable, well-funded candidate with strong support from the base of his (new) party - the question his, how commited is he to put his 29 year career in the hands of Pennsylvania Democrats? 

crossposted at Election Journal

Well this ought to liven things up in the U.S. Senate, dontcha think?

NPR has learned that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the court's current term.

Wonder if transnationalist Harold Koh is going to be repurposed for this new opening?...or will we get someone just as repugnant, but more stealthy?

Souter was a GOP "stealth" nominee whom John Sununu sr. was convinced was a byed in the wool conservative New England Yankee.  To quote Maxwell Smart,....missed by THAT much. 

Liberals tend to find more reliable stealth nominees.

It will be interesting now that Arlen Specter will be on the majority side of Senate Judiciary how he is going to deal with an Obama SCOTUS nominee.  It appears likely that Orrin Hatch will be the new ranking minority leader. I think he's past his pitch count, myself. 

I have no delusions that we will get a Federalist style nominee, but if Obama were serious about appointing a serious nonideological jurists he ought to pick Jose Cabranes

Here's Wikipedia's "short list".  Of the lot, probably Sonia Sotomayor is the least problematic--at least she has siginifcant judicial experience and little time served advancing  radical judicial agendas 

We're going to learn a lot more about President Obama from his pick. We'll also learn a lot more about the Senate Republicans and if they have any fight left in them.