Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) caught the crowd at the
Jefferson-Jackson Dinner by surprise with his greeting: “I thank
the Allegheny Republican Committee for endorsing me for the
Democratic nomination.” Ten minutes later, Specter concluded his
remarks by saying, “Great pleasure to be endorsed by the
Allegheny County Republicans, and together we’ll win for a
victory.”
Just one problem: Specter was speaking to the Allegheny County
Democratic Committee. The five-term incumbent had a similar slip
of the tongue last month when he spoke to a group of College
Democrats and said, “I’m proud to have been endorsed by the
College Republicans,” before an aide prompted him to correct his
error.
“I think it’s not unusual for anybody to misspeak from time to
time,” Specter told reporters after Tuesday night’s Democratic
dinner. “I’m not a television commentator. I’m not as smooth as
you guys.” As Politico’s Jonathan Martin writes,
“No one actually expects that from Specter, a grizzled survivor
of bare-knuckled Philadelphia politics, two bouts with cancer and
five terms in the Senate.”
The trouble is that Specter — a
Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Democrat in the 45 years since
he first won elected office, as a registered Democrat running on
the Republican ticket — has been forgetting his party for years.
The only thing he consistently remembers is what’s good for the
political fortunes of Arlen Specter.
Next Tuesday, Specter’s political opportunism may finally catch
up with him. In the Democratic primary, he faces Rep. Joe Sestak,
a liberal second-term congressman and retired admiral. Specter
wasn’t a terribly conservative Republican, to the left of his
former party on abortion, racial preferences, taxes, immigration,
and tort reform, but he was conservative enough to give Sestak
plenty of fodder.
After joining in the borking of Robert Bork (he had just been
re-elected the previous year), Specter helped turn back the
borking of Clarence Thomas by grilling Anita Hill (he was up for
re-election the following year). He voted for the Iraq war and
the Patriot Act. The cozy photo-ops with George W. Bush and Rick
Santorum that barely saved him in the 2004 GOP primary are six
years later a liability in the Democratic primary against Sestak.
Republican Arlen Specter voted against Elena Kagan for solicitor
general but Democrat Specter will probably vote for her for the
Supreme Court.
But Sestak doesn’t have to limit his campaign against Specter to
left-right issues. He and likely Republican nominee Pat Toomey,
the former Club for Growth president who nearly unseated Specter
in the last GOP primary, can make the non-ideological case that
the incumbent is someone who will say and do anything to get
re-elected. (Toomey has wisely prepared himself to run against
either Democrat.)
Last year, Toomey accepted the Sestak campaign’s invitation to
appear at a joint health care forum. “While I look forward to a
substantive debate about honest differences with Congressman
Sestak, I wish such an exchange was possible with Arlen Specter,”
Toomey said in a statement. “Unfortunately, with Senator Specter,
one never knows which Arlen Specter will show up — the May 2009
version who opposed a public health care option, or the August
2009 version who ardently supports it.”
Sometimes Specter’s malleability reaches almost laughable
proportions. Blogger and number-cruncher Nate Silver
took a look at Specter’s votes in the months before and after
his party switch. From the time of Barack Obama’s 10-point
victory in Pennsylvania in November 2008 to late March 2009,
Specter voted with the Democrats on contentious issues 58 percent
of the time. Then Quinnipiac released a poll showing Toomey
beating Specter by 14 points in the Republican primary. For the
next month, he voted with the Democrats only 16 percent of the
time.
Specter’s lurch to the right didn’t stop the bleeding with the
GOP primary electorate, prompting his party switch. During his
first month as a Democrat, he maintained some independence by
voting with his party on contentious matters 69 percent of the
time. Then Sestak announced a primary challenge. Specter adjusted
by voting with the Democrats on 97 percent of the next 29
contentious Senate votes.
To put it another way: Specter went from an 84 percent Republican
to a 97 percent Democrat in just two months, despite nearly 30
years of service in the Senate. “Arlen Specter,” Silver
concluded, “is either just about the best reflection or the worst
reflection on the state of our Democracy — it’s just hard to say
which one.”
When Specter returned to the Democratic Party, he wasn’t shy
about admitting why: “My change in party will allow me to be
re-elected.” He also acknowledged at the time, “I am not prepared
to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by
the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.”
Specter hopes Pennsylvanians will have similar motivations and
re-elect him because of his seniority and skill at bringing home
the bacon. He asks incredulously, “Why would you want to trade 30
years of experience and seniority… for somebody who’s a
back-bencher?” He said this the same day West Virginia Democrats
bounced a 14-term incumbent and just three days after Utah
Republicans booted a three-term senator who was also an
appropriator.
The polls mostly show the race close but the momentum in Sestak’s
direction. Franklin & Marshall has Sestak leading 38 percent
to 36 percent, Morning Call has them tied at 45 percent,
Quinnipiac has Specter up by two. The incumbent hopes that the
Pennsylvania Democratic machine, promised to him as part of
Obama’s naked power grab for a short-lived filibuster-proof
majority, will get out the vote to put him over the top.
But not even Obama’s friends privately believe Specter deserves
it. “It’s the party-switching,” one told Politico. “He
just didn’t finesse it and wound up looking pretty ham-handedly
like he was trying to save his own ass.” Instead Specter may have
just painted a big bull’s-eye on it.
