Apr
30
Don’t Let the Door Hit Ya’…
Filed Under Uncategorized | 5 Comments
… where the Good Lord split ya.
On Tuesday, RINO Senator Arlen Specter switched parties to become a Democrat. He cited the fact that the GOP had moved too far to the right, had become too intolerant of moderates, and that he was ”…not prepared to have my 29 year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.” Am I the only one that finds it wrong that an incumbent politician refuses to subject himself to voters?
This will give GOP challenger Pat Toomey a clear path to the Republican nomination to challenge Specter in the general. Pat Toomey is a former member of the House of Representatives and headed the Club For Growth after losing to Specter in the GOP primary in 2004. I have followed Toomey’s career with interest, and the Club For Growth (of which I am a member) was one of the organizations that I researched and eventually led to me leaving the Democrat party . I was already planning on supporting and donating to Toomey’s campaign, and will be doing so with even more enthusiasm now.
The reactions to this defection have been pretty much as one would expect. Conservatives have echoed my sentiments above, while moderates have seen it as another red flag of the waning GOP.
Moonbattery: “Only by ridding itself of the lowly likes of Specter will Republicans reemerge as the party that can rebuild the country by upholding the principles that made it great.”
Rush Limbaugh: “This Arlen Specter business. Maybe I’m outta touch. I am stunned at the way the political class, both Republicans and Democrats, are dealing with this defection of Arlen Specter to the Democrat Party. It’s almost like a religious leader abandoned the religion, which is not the case. We got rid of some dead weight.”
RedState: “A “moderate” Republican, Specter has long been at odds with mainstream Republicans on spending and life issues, as well as several other positions.”
R. Stacy McCain: “Exit lying. One less member of the Senate Republican “Jellyfish Caucus.” Specter reminds me of the high-school slut trying to sleep her way to popularity — a weak reed, blown by the shifting winds. The fact that the national GOP apparatus lined up behind this venomous crapweasel in 2004 is all you need to know about what a worthless waste of time the national GOP apparatus was during the Bush/Mehlman era.”
If Al Franken (D-MN) is seated in the Senate, the Democrats will have a filibuster-proof majority. Many see this as opening the door to an avalanche of big-government liberalism that could have been avoided had the Republicans been able to keep Specter. The question I have is this:
What the hell else can they do?
Now don’t get me wrong. Card check, universal health care, and cap-and-trade are all disastrous proposals. But lets not forget what Specter has already done. Specter voted for Obama’s $787,000,000,000.00 ’stimulus bill.’ It is the single most expensive piece of legislation in U.S. history. What exactly are we keeping this ace in the hole for? To sponsor, “A resolution honoring the important contribution to the Nation of the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on its 150th Anniversary”??? Some more of Specter’s highlights, from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:
What did his Porkulus vote tell us about his core values? He doesn’t support the social-issues positions of some conservatives, nor does he support fiscal constraint and responsibility. I’m looking for any corner of a Republican tent that could possibly cover where Specter stands, and I’m not seeing any. Taxes? He voted to water down the Bush tax cuts. Judges? Specter went along with the Borking of, well, Robert Bork. Specter in 1990 opposed parental notification on abortions — not consent, but notification.
In an op-ed in the New York Times, fellow ‘moderate Republican’ Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine bitched and moaned:
IT is disheartening and disconcerting, at the very least, that here we are today — almost exactly eight years after Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party — witnessing the departure of my good friend and fellow moderate Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, for the Democratic Party. And the announcement of his switch was all the more painful because I believe it didn’t have to be this way.
…
There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.
It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”
So how is voting for TARP and the stimulus advocating ”restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, [and] tax reduction,”?
I get the ‘big-tent’ strategy. I believe in it. As a small ‘l’ libertarian and registered Republican, I get that there must be diversity of opinion. None of our goals will be realized if we don’t win elections and forge coalitions. But there must be some core brand that the GOP can offer voters. There must be a point where a line is drawn. Specter is not a ‘moderate Republican.’ He is a centrist Democrat, or a liberal. If you cannot offer a compelling, base-line philosophical reason why you are a Republican and not a Democrat, then get the hell out.
