The Redhunter

An April 24 Rasmussen poll has him down by a whopping 21 points to former Rep Pat Toomey. 51% of Pennsylvania Republican voters said they would support Toomey, with just 30% supporting Specter.

Assuming Al Franken wins in Minnesota, which is virtually certain, this will give Democrats their 60 seat filibuster proof majority

The joke making the rounds is "I read that Specter was switching parties, but I was disappointed to learn he's still a Democrat."

The editors of National Review have it about right

Arlen Specter belongs to a type familiar to Congress: the time-serving hack devoid of any principle save arrogance. He has spent three decades in the Senate but is associated with no great cause, no prescient warning, no landmark legislation. Yet he imagines that the Senate needs his wisdom and judgment for a sixth term. He joined the Republican party out of expediency in the 1960s, and leaves it out of expediency this week.

I don't buy idea that the GOP has moved to the right, or "too far" to the right The reason we've lost elections recently is 1) Iraq, and 2) We didn't hold true to our own principles. It's the Democrats who have moved steadily to the left. President Obama makes Bill Clinton look positively Reaganesque.

So It's not that Republicans need to become more or less conservative. What they need to do is adhere to their principles, whatever they are. The one thing the public will not tolerate is saying one thing and doing another. Authenticity is valued more than anything.

Specter is mostly without principles. A politician with principles would have run in his parties primary anyway, and then if he lost either retired or do what Joe Lieberman did and simply become an independent.

Further, Specter's contention that the GOP abandoned him does not stand up.

When Toomey lost to Specter in the GOP primary in 2004 he endorsed Specter

In 2004 President Bush and other Republicans campaigned for Specter.

Barely two weeks ago National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn released a letter endorsing Specter in his primary race against Toomey.

Despite this, Specter is so unpopular in the GOP that he figures he has a better chance in the Democrat primary. He will already have one declared opponent, businessman Joe Torsella, and Rep. Joe Sestak may run as well. It would be ironic, not to mention sweet justice, if he lost this one as well. If he does, though, I'm sure he'll file to run as an independent.

Senator Olympia Snowe wrote in The New York Times today that "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," but that's nonsense. The GOP hasn't made social issues the centerpiece of it's message since 2002 or 2004 at the latest. They were mostly ignored in the last campaign. When it was brought up, it was by the media or liberals who wanted to bash Sarah Palin. To be sure, there are conservative groups that hit Obama on his pro-abortion record, but those were independent groups, not Republican candidates themselves.

Snowe also writes that

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.

But she's no fiscal conservative, having voted for President Obama's massive stimulus bill.

On the other side, Republican Senator Jim DeMint is wrong too when he said

I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don't have a set of beliefs.

Sorry, but I'd rather have 60 Republicans of just about any stripe, as long as maybe 30 of them were true conservatives. If you have a majority you control the agenda because you control the committees.

Big Tent Or No?

In the end I'm pretty much a big-tent conservative. So I won't fall to temptation and say "good riddance" to Senator Specter. I'd just as soon he had stayed. That said, I'm not at all sad to see him go, and I would have rooted for Pat Toomey to beat him in the primary. As it is, I think Toomey stands an excellent chance to win this November in the general.

You should not want your party to be purist because if you do you'll never get a majority. That said, there are limits to what can be tolerated. In 1988 William F. Buckley Jr. famously organized "BucPac" to defeat liberal Republican Senator Lowell Weicker (it worked and Joe Leiberman won that year). There have been other liberal Republicans I've been happy to see leave too.

Democrats who are welcoming Specter into their fold ought to be cautious, for he'll turn on you just as well when it suits his purposes.

Larger, I've followed and more recently participated in politics for over 30 years. I've seen numerous turns and twists. I've seen a lot of party switches. Each time a party wins big they proclaim that theirs is a permanent majority and the other party will soon wither away. Of course it never happens. Within a few short years the other party reorganizes and starts winning again. So while I'm certainly not happy with the current political landscape, neither am I demoralized. After all, we've got an election to win in Virginia this year, and it's time to get on with it.