You Know Things Are Bad When...

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Look who's leaving the sinking ship:

I also hear that those willing to admit to being Repuclicans are down to 21 percent. 21 percent!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/30442274#30442274

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30456741/?from=ET

It's time to give up the strategy of just shouting what "Ronald Reagan would do." And it's high-time to forget about Bush/Cheney. Try something new.

 

I'm of two minds here. On the one hand, we can assume that Franken will eventually be seated, and it would give the Democrats a filibuster proof majority.

On the other hand, I'm originally from Pennsylvania, and since Specter has been a senator there since WWII (not literally but a really long time), and that I still have family in PA, I do know quite a bit about his political philosophy. This thing is, I'm not so sure that Specter going Democrat is going to greatly impact the way he votes. If he can be swayed to vote Democrat on the most important issues, that's great, but anyone who thinks he is going to be a raving leftist is deluding themselves. He was a very moderate Republican, and now he is going to be a very moderate Democrat. I think there is some truth that Specter isn't any different philosophically than what he was 10 or 20 years ago. Rather, it is the Republican party that has moved much further to the right, and left him - not he who has left the Republican party.

 

From TPM:

 

Sir, I think you need to get your facts straight:

Link. Joining the democrats. Pfft.

 

This just shows the lack of character of specter, especially considering his comments in 2001 when jim jeffords became an independent

Nothing like a flip-flopping politician.
Just another reason for term limits.

 

Lmao, Drew, that's great. Honestly, I think people (and our system) make way too much of 'party affiliations'. I'd much rather elect someone based on his/her positions on issues than whether (s)he was a Republican or a Democrat. This is a perfect example. I seriously doubt Specter's philosophies or positions on the issues have changed any in the last few months (or from the look of it, few decades), so I imagine the only actual votes that will be impacted are those where he doesn't feel very strongly and is willing to let back-room dealing go it's course. The issues where the Dems will need this super-majority will be the very issues that he'll vote the same way on regardless of his party affiliation (whether that's in support of the Dems or opposition to them).

 

Talk about distorting the truth.

Spector is doing this to try to save his political life. He has absolutly no chance to win the Republican primary and I've read he had even less of a chance of winning as an independent. His only shot at maintaining his Senate seat was to switch to the Democrats and hope they will support him as an incumbant.

It will be interesting to see as I'm sure there were some Democrats that were counting on running against him, and now they have to figure out if they want to run against him in a primary.

If anything this shows the disgraceful atittude of "entitlement" to their "seat" that many politicians show these days. I have the utmost respect for the founding fathers, but they badly screwed up by not putting term limits into the original constitution.

 

He could not, since his state has a "sore loser" law to prevent just that. In other words, he can't win as a Republican, so he's switching parties. I had no doubt that he was changing to the Democrats to stay in politics, since many other Republicans are now pursuing other careers.

"All aboard the Titanic...that are going."

 

Obama, what a failure.
Even with all the love that the media has shown him, his personal charm & being a better speaker*, obama still couldn't get better than a 56% approval rating after his 1st 100 days.

This may sound good until you realise that BOTH bushes had higher ratings.

Ronald Reagan is #1 April 1981 : 67 percent approval.
Jimmy Carter is #2 with 63 percent in 1977
George W. Bush is #3 with 62 percent in 2001
Richard Nixon is #4 with 61 percent in 1969
George H.W. Bush is #5 with 58 percent in 1989.
The only president with a worse rating since Gallup started doing this 1969 was Clinton with a 55% rating.

But don't worry about it because the dems will find someway to blame it on bush!

* - actually reader

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30454232/

 

Snook,
you're looking too short. Political survival or not - two things:

First, you ignore to what an extent the GOP has indeed tilted towards the right. The purge of centrists has been happening under Rove's reign already, and since the GOP loss against the D's in the presidential elections, the right has been going to the right even further in an attempt to go back to the roots.

Second, as a centrist he has been a dying breed in the GOP. Assuming he sees that the current course of the GOP (Economic crisis? Let it crash!) in his state is not good for the state and the country and that as a Democrat he can do more for his state and the country?

As long as candidates are financed by (ideological) hard core supporters in their parties, that isn't going to go away. If your party is set up that way, candidates don't have to appeal to a broad audience, but to the most ideologically committed core. If a hard core candidate is funded by ideological people through direct mail, then he is likely going to have more leverage than a more moderate candidate of his own party. Newt Gingrich pioneered that with considerable success. It was perfected by Rove. The result for the GOP is that the tent gets smaller. Not only that, the party risks becoming a special interest, and ultimately minority party. You have all those litmus tests to prove your ideological purity. Polarisation becomes your raison d'être. You love Jesus? You oppose abortion, fags, gun control, trial lawyers, taxes and love privatisation of no matter what, want the ten commandments in court, and see Democrats being the spawn of Satan? All yes? Excellent - you're GOP approved candidate material. Like Sarah Palin. If not, then you're one of those suspicious, centrist waffle candidates like Arlen Specter, or John McCain.

Want to see more centrists in the GOP? Redistrict away from the safe seats so candidates have to deal with people other than their claqeurs, say, sceptics of the party line, or worse, Democrats. I predict, with a returning focus in election campaigns on persuading voters, rather than merely motivating the own troops, campaigns would probably become more civil as well. Perhaps you also want to install public campaign financing and reduce special interest financing of candidates - including right wing nuts funding right wing nuts to run as GOP candidates. In the long run that would be good for the party.

The GOP has fallen victim to its own success. It's faithful cling to the old creed and formulas that brought them victory after victory the last 25 years: Long live St. Ronald Reagan! Economy is down? Lower taxes! Economy is up? Lower taxes! Privatise everything! Economic crisis? Let them all go up in flames! - this mindlessness is what is and has been driving people like Specter out. The GOP used to have intellectuals. Where are they today? They're marginalised, and after the centrists are out they'll be next. In a sense, the GOP revolution is eating its fathers, a little bit like Pol Pot eradicating the literate and educated to create his peasant paradise. Thanks to stellar GOP marketing campaigns, the foot folk the GOP rational then used to sucker came to believe all the nonsense they've been told with a vengeance and now attack the GOP rational for inconsistency:

Torches and pitchforks! Hang that dastardly son of a b*tch, he flip-flopped! He is now for taxes, based on the silly claim that the state in order to be able to act needs funds - funds to prepare for things as a health system, say, to deal with so-called flu pandemics! Preposterous! The free market and the grace of God will settle the Flu! The state only needs money for police and the military.

Today's GOP prefers to think with its guts, functions by instinct. Today's GOP is a place where people are at home who think the world is 6000 years old, want to teach evolution as science, who oppose HPV immunisation on grounds that it encourages promiscuity, and so forth. It's a ship of fools. A conservatism that becomes a mere set of ideological reflexes is dead. Conservatism is about critical thinking - used to be in America, too. Look for the apparent leading 'thinkers' in today's GOP - Rush Limbaugh and perhaps Glenn Beck.

 

Sorry chandos i will believe Gallup polls over msnbc everyday of the week.

 

Martuag you migth want to read this then http://www.gallup.com/poll/117598/Obama-Averages-Approval-First-Quarter.aspx since you know this is from gallup, giving Obama a solid 63% approval rating after his first quarter

 

To me your entire response should have been labeled off-topic. You can use all the paragraphs you want to to bash the Republican party that you want to, but the reality is he only switched parties for his political survival. He is no different then Lieberman or anyone else who switches parties depending on how it would effect them. If by some miracle of miracles Massachusetts were to become a Republican stronghold we would see possibly the greatest flipflop in history out of John Kerry

Political service should be an honor and a pain in the ass, not a job and a way to enrich yourself.

 

You might like this equester : http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/28/baracks-in-the-basement/print/

Funny how the poll showing him at 56% isn't posted anymore, when it was just days ago.

 

They poll continuously martaug. A poll from a few days ago is really old news by now. (By the way, you didn't like to the poll itself, but to an opinion piece concerning those poll numbers - I don't know if that was by accident.) I've seen multiple polls on Obama's approval ratings, and it's probably not wise to put too much stock in any one poll. Just like you are justified in saying it's not smart to assume MSNBC is right (67% is higher than any other poll I've seen), it's probably also not wise to assume Gallup has it right (56% is lower than any other poll I've seen).

No one knows for sure what exactly Obama's approval rating is right now, but if you put together a kind of composite index of all the polls out there, Obama seems to have an average poll rating in the lower 60s. Like I said, it's impossible to say which poll is the most accurate, put a composite is likely to average out the extreme out-lying results, and is probably your best bet to come closest to Obama's actual rating.

One interesting quote I heard about Obama came from Chuck Todd (who is admitedly liberal): "A first term president isn't judged by what he does in his first 100 days of his first term as much as he is judged by his last 300 days of his first term. For Obama, that's January-November 2012."

 

I think that's your opinion, and reality was probably a bit more complex. I don't know Arlen Specter. John Kerry, or for that matter Joe Lieberman well enough to say why they do what they do. Political survival is likely a big factor, sure, but most likely not the only one. Specter hasn't always voted with the majority of his colleagues, and iirc was one of the Republicans who supported a part of Obama's budget. It is possible that this made him rather unpopular in his party, and might have poisoned the atmosphere there.

The bottom line is that every Senator can choose whether they are a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or whatever else they want. It should not have been such a big deal when Lieberman did it (though I did dislike the way he spoke against his former colleagues, not exactly the classiest way to do it imo), and it shouldn't be that big of a deal Specter did it. I'd rather have politicians stick for the issues and constituents they represent than vote as a big flock of sheep.

 

Snook,
off topic? No, it's essential. So to you it's apparently just Specter switching sides for personal reasons, 'his political survival' and 'to enrich himself'. Fine with me. Just to make sure I got you right: So service to the country in elected office is all about sticking to a given party affiliation then?

Parties change. What if Specter is 'normal', or 'healthy', but the party is not? Wouldn't you want to know more about the party's malady? To stay in metaphor, Specter leaving the GOP is a symptom, not the sickness itself.

Is it good for a party when the party has no place for moderates any more? When the base, or the activist part that's left of it, doesn't tolerate deviance from party orthodoxy? Mind that in Specter's state many GOPers registered Democrat to vote on Hillary and Obama. Guess who stayed back with the GOP? The loyal troops.

When politicians get flak from their increasingly nutty base for doing things they understand to be reasonable and necessary, like for instance the stimulus bill, what do they do? If they can, they vote with their feet. In the GOP they do that by switching to Independent or Democrat. It's a curious thing, normally it's the other way around, that is, the voters vote for someone else. There is a considerable chance that Specter, if he's smart, will with some probability be retaining his voters after leaving the GOP.

According to my crystal ball, odds are that the GOP in revenge will pick a particularly reliable and orthodox apparatchik to fight him, and make an ugly campaign against the traitor. That will make it easier on the centre of the voters. Likely Specter will be re-elected Senator, and the GOP will have no one else to blame but themselves. But Benedict Arnold Specter will be the low hanging fruit. Rather bash him than ponder about own mistakes. After all, the party is always right.

​

 

I'll try again. I am not saying that politicians should be forced to pick a party and stick with that party forever. Whatever I don't understand is the glee over his decision. Everyone knows that the Republican party is at a low point. His making a change of party now is not some sort of "brave and bold" move. Realists should see it for what it is which is just a desperate attempt to continue a political carear.

Now if Barney Frank were to wake up and say "I've been wrong all these years" and move to the Republican party and give up his chairmenships, now that would be something that would be brave and bold. Kicking on someone when they are down is something that people remember when they get up.

This brings to mind an article in today's paper

 

Oh, please just stop. The GOP is not 'sick.' Just because a group doesn't want to go down the same path you do does not make them wrong -- they may be wrong for you though. Moderates still exist in the republican party, they haven't been kicked out or forced out by the party. The areas where most moderates are strong saw a severe kick back from anti-Bush sentiment and many republican moderates lost this election. The same thing was seen during the Reagan years. This is normal political process in the US.

Spector is leaving the GOP for self-preservation. There is no symptom here, unless it's a symptom of problems in our general election process (which do exist, but I don't see any changes coming). I don't think it's a smart move for him in the long run, but it's a good move for the next election.

The GOP will regroup and the voters will shift their registrations back -- some people left to vote in a historic election (or to vote against a specific candidate) but they will not stay gone. Spector will not get great support in the long run because the democrats will not fully trust him and the republicans will not support someone who turned their back on the party.

I don't think the GOP is a sinking ship. It's going through the same pains the democrats did after Carter.