The Hill reported yesterday that Vice President Joe Biden, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and junior U.S. Senator Bob Casey have all tried to get Republican Sen. Arlen Specter to join the Democrats. According to the report, so far Specter’s answer is no.

Specter has been the bête noire of Pennsylvania conservatives for a generation but, with the recent decision of former Rep. Pat Toomey to challenge him again in next year’s Republican primary, it looks as if his luck has run out. Though Specter’s fundraising prowess and ability to win in November has won him five terms, his defections on key conservative issues (dating back to his opposition to the nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court and demonstrated as recently as this winter, with his votes for the stimulus package and against school choice in the District of Columbia) have convinced many Republicans that the pleasure of defeating him is more important than the risk of losing the seat if Toomey is the nominee.

Rendell told the Hill that Specter “doesn’t want to see Republican moderates vanish from the earth.” The problem is, a majority of Pennsylvania Republicans may not agree. And without big guns like George W. Bush and former senator Rick Santorum to bail him out this time (as they did when he beat Toomey by a hair in 2004), conservatives sense that Specter is more vulnerable than ever. The senator may realize that 2010 will be different. That’s exactly why the Dem big guns are hoping he will re-join their ranks 44 years after he switched parties. In 1965, he left the Democrats in order to challenge the Philadelphia Democratic Party machine in a successful run for the post of district attorney.

If Specter did flip, he would certainly be a heavy favorite to win both the Democratic nomination and the general election. But just because Rendell is ready to welcome him back into the fold doesn’t mean that those Democrats who are currently planning to challenge him will all back down. I can easily imagine Rep. Allyson Schwartz, who represents parts of Philadelphia and suburban Montgomery County in the U.S. House and who has been raising money for a senate challenge, gambling that a feminist rebellion against Specter might be worth a try. Liberals still hold Specter’s tough questioning of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in 1991 against Arlen the way conservatives still resent his dismissal of Bork. And Schwartz, who ran a Planned Parenthood clinic in Philadelphia from 1975 to 1988, might decide that she would be able to rally partisan Democrats and feminists to beat Specter.

On the other hand, it’s also possible that Specter’s camp is itself trying to promote the idea that the Senator will switch sides. They may hope to scare Republican leaders who understand that giving the Dems a 60th vote in the Senate would be disastrous for those who hope that Congress will be able to restrain President Obama’s liberal agenda.

del.icio.us

Google

Facebook

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 4:21 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.