Likelihood of Success

Spectral thoughts

May 5, 2009 Heart and spirit, Politics and Poker

The Bipartisan Rules blog, relying — not surprisingly on this point — on support from David Frum, writes as follows:

The Republican Party should be a political vehicle, not an ideological movement, but its opinion makers have it completely backward.

Its policies have become secondary to this ideal that we must keep alive the flame of Reagan, years after the Gipper has passed on, and that any elected official with an (R) behind his name who dares step out of line has committed heresy. There is no room for ideological deviation.

Sen. Specter is a guy who has voted with the Republican Party a little less than half the time over his career. To be sure, he is no conservative. But he is a moderate, and he counted himself a member of the senatorial Republican caucus.

Republicans in 2009 have adopted the same attitude that Democrats took in 2006 when Joe Lieberman was up for re-election. . . .

While Lieberman still caucuses with the Democrats, the Democrats effectively lost a seat, burned virtually all goodwill with one of the most senior and influential members of the Senate, and whatever control over Lieberman they might have had is now lost.  It was a collective huge error in judgment.

Furthermore, the Lieberman/Lamont fiasco was an enormous black eye for the party, as it branded them a party whose policies were dictated by the extremists on the far left.

But that’s exactly the path the Republican Party was on with respect to Arlen Specter.

I understand this point.   And I have written repeatedly about what I regard as an unhappy tendency toward, not ideological extremism — which I am not so inclined to call, how you say?, a vice — but a very regrettable coarsening of the tone of discussion and activism.  It’s not pretty, and there are plenty of reasons to worry about it.

But I think these thoughts about Specter are wrong, wrong, wrong. Here’s the key wrong paragraph:

Sen. Specter is a guy who has voted with the Republican Party a little less than half the time over his career. To be sure, he is no conservative. But he is a moderate, and he counted himself a member of the senatorial Republican caucus.

Voting Republican “less than half the time” is not enough.   This is not a matter of ideological purity:  He has been a net loss for the GOP measured by votes alone.

And we do not measure by votes alone.  Specter siphoned off Republican fundraising to a career spent voting with the Democrats “a little more than” half the time.  He retarded the development of a bona fide conservative Republican base and cadre of potential leaders in Pennsylvania.  And by virtue of “count[ing] himself a member of the senatorial Republican caucus” he was a source of embarrassment while voting as a member of the Democratic caucus, how could it be argued that he benefitted the former?

The comparison to Lieberman is not apt, because Lieberman was and is, in fact, a completely dependable knee-jerk liberal except as to one issue:  His support of the Iraq war.  Indeed the left-wing campaign to punish him for departing from this orthodoxy was self-destructive, but utterly unavoidable, for liberals do not accept divergence from the only true moral position on issues, as we know.

In contrast, Specter is not only more likely to vote with Democrats than Republicans, he has, as demonstrated above, had an overall negative impact on the Republican future in Pennsylvania.  In short, he has harmed the Republican Party as “a political vehicle.”

And here is the kicker.

Joe Lieberman risked his reelection by standing on principle — for he would have ridden to easy victory had he merely followed the prevailing political winds and, like all the other Democrats in Congress who voted for the war, now “confessed” his foolish past ways, like a good Stalinist should, and joined the inquisition.  Lieberman took the chance of not being reelected in order to follow his conscience.  Specter may bray that he did not leave the GOP, the GOP left him; yet in Joe Lieberman’s case it is literally true that the Democrats in Connecticut declined to make him, the incumbent Democratic Senator, their candidate for the Senate.  He did not destroy his party in Connecticut; it sought to destroy him.

In contrast, Arlen Specter changed parties premised on the exact opposite proposition, crowing, “I am unwilling to have my 29-year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.” Not only did he not risk reelection to stand for a principle, he made it explicit that Arlen Specter’s only desideratum is another eight years at the Senate trough.  After decades of apologetic, pragmatic and loyal GOP investment in Arlen Specter, despite his obvious liabilities, when faced with a Republican electorate that wanted change, Arlen Specter dispensed with loyalty and — pragmatically, yes, but certainly not apologetically — chose . . .  Arlen Specter.

Specter, to his credit, looks cancer in the face and fights it bravely.  He has had many moments in his career of which he can be justly proud.  He has supported, outside of the Senate chamber, initiatives and programs that are very deserving, some quite near to my heart, and only the most crassly partisan of politicos would deny that his career has been distinguished.

This was a crucial moment where retirement would have made perfect sense for Arlen Specter.  Stepping down would have aptly and graciously crowned that lifetime of achievement.  He will be 81, as Punning Pundit pointed out here last week and others have done elsewhere, by the next Election Day.  His disease has, sadly, returned.  He no longer feels at home in what he called his own party, but rather than choosing to caucus with the other side, he could have been uniquely suited to anoint a relatively moderate Republican successor.  If moderation was his concern, why not stay in office and help guide the future to a Republican who may have been acceptable to the electorate, a lasting Specter legacy in the party.

Specter could have retired in dignity and honor, as those things go for lifetime politicians, with a plethora of opportunities for spending his time constructively along with plum Senate benefits to keep spending taxpayer money, too.  No retirement from the good life was threatened for Arlen Specter.

But he could not willingly let go of one thing:  Power.

I am not the biggest Joe Lieberman fan.  But his political performance over Iraq in the face of a viscious, vindictive campaign of personal destruction was — for principle, courage and pure guts — the antithesis of the shameful maneuverings of Arlen Specter.

I don’t know Joe Lieberman, and I can’t call him a friend of mine.  But I can say to Arlen Specter, you’re no Joe Lieberman.