If you have been following this tumultuous session of Congress with any fair amount of attention, you will recall that in April 2009 senior Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (R) decided to change parties. While the new and improved Sen. Specter (D) gears up for his race in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, there are some serious reasons why he should not be supported. Even though we live a few states away, the campaign for change has touched us all, and this is far from genuine change.
Sen. Specter has been haunting the Senate for 29 years. If you want to talk about entrenched management this is your guy. He’s been a Republican for almost three decades, though when he was serving as Assistant Distric Attorney of Philadelphia he was a registered Democrat. If you know anything about President Kennedy’s assassination, you know that Specter served on the Warren Commission that investigated the murder. Magic bullet theory? Specter came up for that water-tight explanation.
So Specter has a history of switching parties when it comes to personal gain, or as he says “serving the people of Pennsylvania.” His reasoning is explained below in an excerpt from the official Statement he released in April:
“While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvanaia and the nation.Last year, more than 200,00 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.”
So basically the Senator has been a Republican for this long because it’s what Pennsylvania wanted? So for the last eight years, in the decline of the Republican party, Sen. Specter didn’t become a Democrat because it’s not what the people wanted? I am sorry Mr. Specter, but the truth is that Pennsylvania has been a blue state since 1992. It has consistently voted for a Democratic president in the last five elections. The thing is, Sen. Specter is an incumbent. As I mentioned in a previous editorial, incumbents enjoy a huge lead in the polls so long as they can keep their noses clean, they can win hands down in almost any election because of financing and name recognition. That is until your political party starts two wars, wrecks the economy and loses overwhelmingly in the previous congressional election. That is a Ghostbuster for Sen. Specter.
So Specter pulled an old trick; if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. It’s not that it is wrong to switch parties or change your political opinions but it becomes a problem when you do it solely for political survival. Sen. Specter didn’t have the foresight to recognize that the Republican Party was going to go bananas back in 2001. He stayed on the gravy train until it crashed. It would be one thing if he decided to run as an independent in this election-that could be understandable. Right now though, he needs to get away from the bad PR that Republicans are oozing, and the only way he can do that is to get branded by the party of “Change.”
There’s no way that Specter could win as an independent, even if his political philosophy says as much. The Primary in Pennsylvania is closed, so he’s hoping to win based on former Republicans switching parties and winning over moderates. If he wins the primary, he will essentially run unopposed in the general election because there is no way a Republican will win Pennsylvania.
Arlen Specter will be 80 years old next February. He’s set his opinions for a long time, so while the letter after his name might be changing in the papers, his ideas are not. Sen. Specter was welcomed with open arms into the Democratic party because he still had two years left in office and he would give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in Congress. No doubt Sen. Specter will run on a platform that shows off his new-found agreement with the majority. Sen. Specter, however, does not support The Employee Free Choice Act, which would give greater access to unionization by laborers. The passage of this bill will be crucial once we get past the healthcare reform hurdle. If Sen. Specter is re-elected, he will have another six years in office to vote as an “independent Democrat” which will essentially be the same voting pattern as an “independent Republican”-namely, whatever he thinks.
So when you go to the polls this November, or next November or anytime, don’t vote the party line. The line could be somewhere completely different from where you though it was, or worse yet, the person you vote with could just play jump rope with it. Vote for a person’s character, and encourage debate that produces real answers, not partisanship. Thomas Jefferson once said, “The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people.” Specter isn’t attempting to heal the wounds of the last administration, he’s trying to walk away from it’s corpse.