Specter Defection Fuels Trend of Republicans as Party of South
By Heidi Przybyla
April 29 (Bloomberg) -- Senator Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party wounds a depleted Republican opposition that was already struggling to mount a challenge to President Barack Obama. It won’t ensure legislative victories for the majority, though.
Specter’s defection, if coupled with Al Franken being seated as a Democratic senator from Minnesota, would give Democrats 60 votes, enough to break a filibuster if the party votes as a bloc. That’s in no way certain.
The 60-seat number is an “artificial” benchmark, said Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington. “It’s more symbolic importance than anything.”
The move of Pennsylvania Republican Specter also leaves only two self-described moderate senators from the Northeast in the Republican caucus: Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine.
“The party has become more of a private club centered in the South and rural areas,” said former Representative Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican. “It’s not a hospitable place at this point.” Other moderate lawmakers “look at this and wonder, ‘What are we doing here?’”
Specter, 79, said his party has moved too far to the right, particularly in his home state, where he was facing a challenge in the 2010 Republican primary from Pat Toomey, a former member of Congress who has strong conservative backing.
Purifying the Party
“Social conservatives” in the Republican Party have made “no bones about their willingness to lose the general election if they can purify the party,” Specter told a Washington news conference yesterday.
Still, he said he won’t shift his stance to accommodate the Democrats on major agenda items. And other Democrats are likely to break from their party on key issues. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska often votes against his caucus on fiscal matters and Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia does so on procedural issues.
Republicans cast Specter’s move as political opportunism.
“Specter committed a purely political and self-preserving act today,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said in an e-mail to supporters last night. “He simply believes he has a better chance of saving his political hide and his job as a Democrat.” Steele said as recently as April 9 Specter had said he would run as a Republican.
Carrying Home State
With no serious competition for the Democratic nomination, and Obama pledging to assist him, Specter may carry Pennsylvania by a “wide margin,” predicted New York Senator Charles Schumer, a former chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
“It’s fairly clear that this was a political calculation,” said Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A March Quinnipiac poll showed Specter trailing Toomey 41 percent to 27 percent in a Republican primary, while Democrats gave him an approval rating of 71 percent.
Specter and two other Republican senators voted for Obama’s $787 billion economic-stimulus package, fueling opposition from party voters in Pennsylvania.
“It was problematic he would win the Republican nomination,” said Madonna.
‘Independent as Ever’
Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, may be Specter’s closest colleague in the Senate. “I expect him to be as independent as ever,” said Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, on which Specter is the top Republican.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Specter told him he’ll support any Republican efforts to filibuster a vote on the so-called “card-check” bill, a union-organizing tool that many Democrats support.
The greater concern for the Republican Party is one of diminishing numbers. An average of 36 percent of Americans identified themselves as Democrats and 28 percent as Republicans in 2008, the largest advantage for Democrats since 1988, according to a Gallup poll in January.
There are 18 states where Republicans have lost in five consecutive elections. In Pennsylvania alone, 130,000 Republicans switched parties before the primary elections last year.
The party lost 54 House seats in the 2006 and 2008 elections, leaving a smaller base of more conservative members representing largely Southern and Western states.
Faulting the Club
Davis faults Club for Growth, an organization that promotes lower taxes that Toomey used to lead, for a dozen House losses by helping to defeat moderate Republicans in primaries against conservative candidates who ultimately lost the general election.
Specter defeated Toomey, 50.8 percent to 49.2 percent, in Pennsylvania’s 2004 Republican primary. He won the general election that year with 52.6 percent of the vote.
His defection reverses a trend in which most of those switching political parties were Democrats becoming Republicans. They included Senators Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, Richard Shelby of Alabama and Phil Gramm of Texas, who became a Republican when he was in the House.
Specter, originally a Democrat, became a Republican to run for district attorney in Philadelphia in 1965. In 2001, Vermont Republican Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party to become an independent.
The Republicans are also in a fundraising bind, said Adam Geller, a Republican pollster.
“The real key to any kind of resurgence is finding the kind of Republican that’s going to be able to win over enough independent, moderate voters in the middle,” he said. Yet it is the “most ideologically strident” members of the party who are most successful in raising money.
To contact the reporters on this story: Heidi Przybyla in Washington at hprzybyla@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: April 29, 2009 00:01 EDT |
