Specter of Irrelevance

Shades of Jim Jeffords!

While Arlen Specter's decision to bolt the Republicans isn't the political earthquake that that the former Vermont lawmaker triggered when he flipped Senate control to the Democrats in 2001, it is one heckuva big deal.

Leave aside the Beltway implications for a second, because I'm going to offer a contrarian view.

The Pennsylvania senator says he will continue to follow his conscience, but he has just stiffed the voters of his state, the way every opportunistic party-switcher does. A majority of them voted for a Republican to represent them in D.C. for six years, and suddenly they've got a Democrat who will work with Obama's party.

Jeffords did it in 2001. Richard Shelby did it in 1994, one day after the Republicans seized control of the Senate, and Ben Nighthorse Campbell the following year, thus giving them the added clout of being in the majority.

Phil Gramm did it the right way in 1983. He quit the Democratic Party, resigned his House seat, ran for reelection as a Republican and won. The voters ratified his choice.

Michael Bloomberg, a lifelong Democrat, ran as a Republican in 2001 because it was the only way he could get elected mayor. Later on, he quit his party of convenience and became an independent. So much for the Republican flirtation (or term limits, which Bloomberg originally backed but has now blown up so he can win a third term).

Specter says the Republican Party has moved "far to the right," and that may be true, but the obvious motive here is that he concluded he couldn't beat Pat Toomey in next year's GOP primary. (He admitted as much, calling his chances "bleak.") So Pennsylvania voters will get a belated opportunity to accept or reject his move.

Specter's defection would make Al Franken the 60th Democratic vote, but the larger question is whether the Republican Party is now all but moribund in the Northeast. The party of Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits has given way to a more southern, more conservative, more religiously based organization that seems out of step with northern moderates, especially pro-choice, independent lawmakers such as Specter, who (joined by Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe) rescued the president's stimulus bill.

The onetime Judiciary chairman has long shown an independent streak, ticking off the right during the Robert Bork hearings and the left during the Clarence Thomas hearings. But make no mistake: this 79-year-old politician is trying, above all, to ensure his future as an octogenarian senator.

The New York Times calls it "a stunning turnabout in political loyalties. . . . Republicans were knocked off stride by the announcement and many had no warning from Mr. Specter, who met a polite but chilly reception when he entered a party luncheon to inform his colleagues. They immediately labeled it, in the words of Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who heads the party's campaign arm, a naked act of "political self-preservation," and they sought to portray it as an isolated case growing out of Pennsylvania's political environment."

Boston Globe: "Obama's allies portrayed Specter's sudden switch as a ratification of the new president's agenda and further evidence of his opposition's irrelevance."