Specter Exit.
The Keystone State has already moved on, and this peculiarly aimless TV spot for Specter that includes POTUS "saying a few things about Arlen Specter" has the look of a birthday helium balloon the morning after, deflated, bobbing along the ground, unloved. Joe Sestak is pulling away from the turncoat Specter, who is unloved and uncelebrated. Salena Zito asserts that Specter will not pull well west of Philadelphia's counties in the May 18 primary, but I observe he won't do well west of City Line. Pat Toomey, who will represent the GOP, is aware that Sestak is coming hard, and has already gone on air with a profile ad for him and his beautiful young family, including a newborn boy -- just born this last weekend. Nice timing, Pat. Joe Sestak has the energy of 31 years in the USN, leaving a three-star admiral. The Keystone State will be a jousting contest between the parties, and there will not be an obvious wave advantage for Toomey.
Specter and the White House.
Axelrod misread his own Pennsylvania Democrats, who rejected POTUS as a candidate and look to reject POTUS's choice of Specter. Am told that the Specter supprt is a product of the promises made to Specter when he switched parties to provide the 60th vote for cloture. Short-term gain, long-term loss, as the Sestak win against the White House means that the White House intimidates no one in either party -- except the needful Boxer and the sagging Giannoulias. POTUS has lost control of the primaries, and how will he fare in the general? Specter's defeat is useful to close the book on the 20th century version of get-along, back-slapping Republicans. Specter's defeat may also teach the White House that Chicago Rules (Obama and Biden bring an arsenal of pork) don't work in Pennsylvania? Nah.
Although I knew Bob Bennett of Utah back in Arlington, Va., and he was my senator for the last 6 years, I was not sorry to see him go. Up next, Hatch. All these guys, Democrats, Republicans, who came of political age in the Viet Nam/Watergate era are the spiritual children of the New Deal and the go-along-to-get-along Republican minority. None of these guys are Movement Republicans. I don't want anybody in office who didn't come to political awareness before Reagan. These people were trained to the electoral properties of the public fisc. We need a new paradigm for the global collapse of the Welfare State model and constipating regulations that strangle business innovation and capital markets. The only social justice is prosperity bestowed by innovation capturing market share.
Sad to see all those old-style whore politicians clinging so desperately to the now shredded dignity of what once must have been a hopeful enterprise. How does a man like this look in the mirror each morning and reconcile the shameful compromises he's been making all along that so late in life have landed him on the wrong and disgraced side?
Specter is not stupid. He knows what has happened. He also knows he lacks even the courage to simply walk away. He stumbles into the political shredder unable to stop himself. Though POTUS goes through the motions of throwing him a lifeline, Specter knows he is despised by all sides. It's a fair representation of his own internal state. ...far too painful for outsiders to watch unfold.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
"Sad to see all those old-style whore politicians clinging so desperately to the now shredded dignity of what once must have been a hopeful enterprise."
Peter -
From local folk who were here before I was: Bennett promised to serve two terms, is on his third, and was looking for a fourth. Given the way he had been serving comity instead of standing up for conservative principles, that fact stuck in peoples' craws. Commentators can say, "it's all a function of Utah's peculiar process for selecting candidates," but that's another snobbish dismissal of the phenomenon Thomas Frank "discovered," i.e., people vote against their economic interests when something larger is at stake. Bennett had been very good to Utah in terms of pork.