RSS Feed MenuThere’s a man in the Senate who supports drilling in ANWR, school vouchers, the Patriot Act, heightened border security, personal Social Security accounts, free trade, and repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax. He opposed early withdrawal from Iraq and even voted against the most recent minimum wage hike. Unlike our president, he voted to confirm Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts.
His name is Arlen Specter, and he’s on the verge of being purged from the Secret Club.
Club for Growth president Pat Toomey recently announced his intentions to once again take on Senator Specter in the upcoming Republican primary. In 2004, Specter very narrowly escaped a bruising battle against him thanks to the assistance of his allies President Bush and then-Senator Rick Santorum. Thanks to the combination of Specter’s foolhardy vote in favor of the “stimulus” package and the fact that many moderate-to-liberal Republicans exited the party in 2008, his defeat is all but certain, prompting some observers to question whether he might simply exit the party and run as an independent while he still can (Pennsylvania law forbids defeated primary candidates from running in the general election as independents).
No result could be more saddening for the Republican Party. Specter represents exactly the sort of voter that the GOP has been losing in recent years: the kind that agrees with it on several issues and is willing to join it as long as it demonstrates competence and pragmatism. Specter’s presence in the Senate is the sort of assurance that moderates need to know that they’re actually being given a seat at the table and are not merely being used for their votes and then tossed aside.
Mr. Toomey, apparently under the delusion that the GOP is in some sort of position to purify the ranks, subscribes to the theory that Pennsylvania voters, including moderates and independents, will support a “true conservative” if only the voters will finally be presented with one. Is this true?
Luckily for us, we don’t have to make any wild guesses, because we’ve actually tried this out in real life before: in 2006, Pennsylvania Republicans ran a “true conservative” against a liberal with a moderate disposition — and it resulted in an 18-point landslide victory for the Democrats.
So it seems that down-the-line conservatism is actually not what the voters of Pennsylvania are looking for.
The clearly unelectable Pat Toomey could just as easily reserve his anger over the lack of fiscal discipline in the Senate for Bob Casey, whose re-election bid arrives in 2012. But Toomey, like the organization he heads, has made it clear that he’d rather specialize in electing liberal Democrats rather than ousting them.
The real question that faces the Republican Party’s base is not whether Arlen Specter or Pat Toomey would make a better senator. It’s a question of whether the Republican base wants to see its party become a Big Tent or a Secret Club. Of whether it wants in the Senate a man who votes with the GOP slightly over half of the time — or another Bob Casey (2007 ACU rating: 7). Of whether it wants to advance conservatism or whether it wants to chatter amongst itself about how right it is, without actually influencing policy decisions.
The answer is becoming depressingly clear.
barker13 // Mar 11, 2009 at 2:02 pm
AlexK – Thanks for the clarification. We disagree about Toomey’s electoral chances. Personally, I don’t think he could lose. (*SHRUG*) You have no idea how bad things are going to be by November 2010. The problem is though, with today’s GOP still largely RINO when it counts – as evidenced by Specter, Collins, and Snowe turning traitor when it came to the bailout, as evidenced by the RINO Senators who refused to relinquish “their” pork included in this latest porkubus bill – far too many of our serving legislators will be tarred and feathered (and deservedly so) as “no better then Democrats” and even non-incumbents will suffer because of the likes of the RINOs. BOTTOM LINE ALEXK… what I propose… what Franco proposes… what conservative ideologues propose… may indeed be a risk and may indeed not work; but one thing we know for sure is that the RINO way is the way of disaster – no chance inl of us winning with “Democrat Light” policy prescriptions vs. the real thing. (*SHRUG*) BILL
AlexK // Mar 11, 2009 at 2:07 pm
I don’t propose a Democrat Lite party. I’m not sure where exactly you’re getting that idea. You’re extrapolating something that simply is incorrect. I want us to be a conservative party that allows moderates and independents in where conservatives can’t win. We let Snowes be part of the GOP in the Northeast, and we worry about making sure we have Jim DeMints in South Carolina. I don’t see what’s so controversial about this.
barker13 // Mar 11, 2009 at 2:15 pm
AlexK – You SHOULD love the Reagan worship. Reagan was not a God, he wasn’t perfect, he was a man and he made mistakes, but his “pragmatism” was far MORE principled and far LESS broadly defined than I gather yours is or Sinz54’s is or HollywoodBill’s is. And yes, AlexK, Reagan WAS a hardliner – ask PATCO or PRAVDA. (*WINK*) Yes, Reagan raised taxes… a minor transgression and an understandable one based upon what he was trying to broadly accomplish. Same with amnesty. AT THE TIME it appeared a reasonable one-time solution to a major problem. With both examples, the main critique you can make of Reagan was that he actually trusted his political “partners” would keep their words and stick to the sense of substance – stick to the “spirit” as well as the letter of the laws in question. Reagan was right to cut our losses in Lebanon. As to Reagan’s judicial appointments… what’s your point??? Certainly you don’t MEAN to support my point, but that’s what you’re doing – you’re providing a perfect example of what happens when RINOs are allowed free rein and power – they’ll often stab conservatism (not to mention constitutionalism) in the back. (*SHRUG*) Anyway, no AlexK, it’s not odd at all that Reagan is the icon of conservatism; what’s odd is folks who disdain “dittoheads” and apparently disdain Reagan claiming to be conservatives or neoconservatives. Methink there are posers about! (*CHUCKLE*)
sinz54 // Mar 11, 2009 at 4:01 pm
barker13: Remember Reagan’s comment about the Dem Party, of which Reagan was a member in the 1950s: “I didn’t leave the Dem Party. The Dem Party left me.” That’s kind of the way I feel about talk-radio conservatism (and actually Limbaugh is less to blame for this than some others). It is nearly unrecognizable to me now. Even though the Democrats held the White House from 1976-80, the conservatism of that era was upbeat, friendly, optimistic, inclusive, forward-looking, visionary, and convinced that it would bring a new day to America. New ideas for reform, every month. That’s not what I’m seeing today. Conservatism today is angry, bitter, insular, paranoid, content to retreat into a Red State cocoon rather than reach out to others. It insists on adherence to litmus tests–or else you just aren’t worthy of being a conservative; as if conservatism is Mensa, to which you can only belong if you pass an entrance exam. Yet at the same time, it’s disdainful of scholarship and graduate school education, believing that Joe The Plumber has more wisdom than a scientist with a Ph.D. (I’ve actually known personally–and admired–one or two self-taught men, but I remember the many years of self-study it took for them to get that way, as long as it takes to get an advanced degree at a university.) Modern conservatism claims “steadfast adherence to principles”–yet it circles the wagons around failed officials like Rumsfeld, and around extremist personalities like Ann Coulter. And modern conservatism doesn’t bother to check its assumptions against actual facts. It promulgates a totally unsupported urban myth that the GOP lost because it wasn’t conservative enough; without reviewing the record of the Bush Administration, and without reviewing the exit polls to see just why voters voted the way they did. In short, this type of conservatism sounds just like Archie Bunker or Ralph Kramden ranting to his bartender in his favorite bar, over a few beers. And I never became a conservative to take direction from Archie Bunker. Archie Bunker is welcome to campaign alongside me for a right-wing America. But I don’t take direction from him.
HollywoodBill // Mar 11, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Sinz, you left off mean spirited about today’s conservatism. The treatment of gays by the religious right is enough to make thinking people ask if they really want to be a participant in such bigotry and open hatred. And ironically, Reagan wanted and would not participate in the hatred that the socons presented in 1978 with the Briggs Initiative. Reagan’s shining city on the hill had room for everyone. But the GOP of the 70s and 80s did not exclude people. Everyone was invited and wanted to belong. Hard to imagine today, but all young people were Republicans in 1980,
Captain America // Mar 11, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Hollywood…so it was evangelicals who pushed around old ladies and publicized lists of campaign contributers? It was evangelicals who blacklisted anyone who disagreed with them? You toss around words like “bigotry” and “hatred” in ways identical to liberals and leftists. Militant homosexual groups bully and intimidate anyone who opposes them, and refuse to accept the will of the people and you target evangelicals? In these posts, centrists complain bitterly about how they are shunned by more right leaning conservatives, but using the tactics of the anti-intellectual left is exactly what causes more solid conservatives to hold you guys in such disdain.
AlexK // Mar 11, 2009 at 9:19 pm
No, Captain America, because Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were too busy blaming gays for 9/11 to notice. And then it’s people publicizing lists of campaign donors who are the militants? Give me a break.
Captain America // Mar 12, 2009 at 4:50 am
Alex…as Hollywood did, you are parroting the words of the Left. Falwell and Robertson never directly attributed homosexuals as causing 9/11, they blamed a morally deficient America as the cause. If you are not a fundamentalist Christian this idea seems silly, but they are preachers for God sakes! Thats what they are supposed to say. For the record, I also believe what they said was ridiculous, but until they call for someone’s destruction or banishment to an island they are neither bigots nor hateful.
sinz54 // Mar 12, 2009 at 7:00 am
Captain America: This nation was founded on the principle of unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness–rights that could not be taken away by a government or by the “tyranny of the majority.” G-a-y-s have unalienable rights just like you and I. Yet those rights were *abrogated* for many years, by sodomy laws that made homosexual sex, even in one’s own bedroom, a crime. Their pursuit of happiness is made less possible by laws that don’t take into account a homosexual couple’s need for inheritance rights, hospital visitation rights, etc. All these folks want is the same things that you and I want–equality and RESPECT.
sinz54 // Mar 12, 2009 at 7:05 am
HollywoodBill: What Reagan said in 1978 was: “Homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.” By today’s standards, that would make Reagan a “social liberal”.
sinz54 // Mar 12, 2009 at 7:15 am
HollywoodBill: It’s all part of the “defensive crouch” that conservatives are in now: They see themselves as Galt’s Gulch from Atlas Shrugged, the last bastion of the old morality of the 1950s, rather than as a national movement of the 2000s. On Townhall.com, occasionally single moms will post about the difficulties of raising children alone, and suggesting reforms the GOP could advocate to make that easier. The response from the SoCons? “You should have kept your legs together.” (Nobody noticed that this woman couldn’t have conceived a baby by herself without a man–wasn’t he partly responsible?) The SoCons seem to have a deep seated hatred of female sexuality–if a woman gets pregnant, it’s her fault for not “keeping her legs together,” not the man’s fault for penetrating her. I guess that goes back to the fact that Eve ate from the fruit of Good and Evil before Adam did.
AlexK // Mar 12, 2009 at 7:42 am
So Captain America officially defends Jerry Falwell’s comments that gays are both morally deficient and partially responsible for 9/11. And the new moral standard is: until they call for the destruction of gays, they are not bigoted. You can say that they’re partially responsible for 9/11, but that’s not bigoted — only a Holocaust-level statement constitutes bigotry! Can we get a much better snapshot in one post of what’s wrong with the Religious Right and its defenders?
AlexK // Mar 12, 2009 at 7:47 am
Sinz, the Religious Right has a hatred of sexuality altogether. Gay, straight, or fetishistic, it’s out-of-bounds unless the Bible ordains it. I’m a little pessimistic about having the Religious Right moderate itself, because it’s not in politics to advance pragmatic conservatism or work through a coalition — it’s in politics to praise Jesus through alternative means. That’s wholly incompatible with individual liberty, so it’s bothersome.
sinz54 // Mar 12, 2009 at 8:38 am
AlexK: I never expected the Religious Right to moderate itself. The GOP has to expand its numbers to include many who are not part of the Religious Right. In that way, the Religious Right will represent a smaller percentage of the GOP, and hence lose some of its clout within the party. Steele seems to get this.
HollywoodBill // Mar 12, 2009 at 9:23 am
Sinz, it is so ironic that the socons idolize Reagan considering that the he had so little use for them when he was in power. He signed the most liberal abortion law in the nation before Roe. And during the 80s he never would go to their yearly snake handling festival. And while technology wasn’t what it is today, all he ever sent was an audio cassette to their festivities. Reagan knew full well O’Connor’s views on abortion. He knew her socially since the 1960s and she was on record as an AZ senator as being pro choice. She was Goldwater’s protegee and the Goldwaters were famous libertarian Republicans who would never pander to the so cons. Reagan was from CA, and in the film industry. Of course he knew gays and was pro choice himself. He was a real Californian.
barker13 // Mar 12, 2009 at 10:56 am
Sinz54 4:01 pm – So we’re on the same wavelength! You feel the GOP has left you. Fine. So follow your own thought to its logical conclusion and leave the GOP. You’re making my case for me! Sinz… buddy… while I suppose there’s a place for non-conservatives in the GOP, the GOP is no place for those who HATE conservatives. So again… you should leave the GOP. And as I’ve been saying, not as snark, but as optimistic analysis, if enough folks like you join the Democrats than hopefully one day folks like you will re-take control of the Democratic Party from the Left and that will open the door for the true bipartisan compromises folks like you seem fixated upon. (And frankly, I could see “my” side compromising with “your” side and the country being off for it.) Sinz… I “get” where you’re coming from – which is WHY I respectfully keep coming back to the same point: Both the Democratic Party and the nation would be better off with you as a registered, active Democrat. I WANT people like you in the Democratic Party, not to destroy it, but to reform it. When you insist upon calling yourself a Republican but then acting to attack conservatism from within, all you’re doing is weakening the Republican Party and strengthening the power of the LEFT within the Democratic Party. I only wish you could see that. BILL
Realist // Mar 12, 2009 at 11:12 am
Looks like Spector is on track to becoming the Joe Lieberman of the GOP.