The Senate today voted to permit Specter to remain on all the committees on which he currently sits, thus changing the Democrat/Republican split on these committees in favor of the Democrats, but Specter was required to give up his committee seniority and be the most junior member of each such committee, at least until 2010. Likely many Democrats are also upset at Specter's vote against the Democrats' budget and his (supposedly joking) support for Norm Coleman. Democrats are going to make Specter prove his loyalty and earn their support in the 2010 election - he can't just use their good name for free but vote to filibuster important bills. Lieberman has been getting a free ride because his vote was needed in the 2006-2008 Senate. I hope they get tougher, much tougher, with Lieberman also.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
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5 comments:
I'm glad you brought up Lieberman in this context. I think it's reasonable to expect that Specter looked at how much Lieberman got away with and assumed he'd be given the same treatment.
Now, I don't think the Democrats should be as ruthless with their own as the GOP is but I do think that actively and publicly supporting major candidates from the other party is a reasonable place to draw the line. Lieberman's support for McCain should have been unforgivable. Specter's mistaken endorsement of Coleman - which he later corrected when asked about it - is worth a "yellow card" shall we say.
To be fair, Specter was making a bad joke about the lack of Jewish Republicans, and he apologized yesterday for a bad joke. I believe it was a joke in context.
Good on the Dems for making him prove himself - entirely reasonable and sensible in my view, given that he's just ditched one party, and there's nothing to stop him flipping back if it suited.
Pombat,
You may have heard this already but one of my favorite political quotations is Winston Churchill saying, "Anyone can rat but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat." (Speaking in reference to his having started with the Conservative Party, switched to the Liberal Party for 18 years then switching back to the Conservatives).
Arlan Specter was originally a Democrat. He switched to the Republican party early in his career to get elected to city office in Philadelphia. He has now switched back. We'll see if it was a clever a decision as Churchill's.
More news in this regard. The Senate voted on a new compromise this morning. They recreated the human rights subcommittee of the Judiciary Cmte and allowed Dick Durbin (IL) to be its chairman, in return for him relinquishing his chairmanship of the subcommittee on crime and drugs to Arlen Specter. All sides report they are happy with this improved position for Specter as subcommittee chair.
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