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A Specter Flip on Card Check

By W. James Antle, III on 8.18.09 @ 9:08AM

Yesterday the Hill reported that President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Pennsylvania to raise funds for recently minted Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter. (And to think it was less than six years ago that Specter was enlisting the support of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Rick Santorum.) Obama will go to bat for Specter on Sept. 15 and the details of the Biden event are still being worked out.

Just three days before this announcement, Specter seemed to flip on card check. When he bolted the Republican Party earlier this year, Specter said he would not change his position on the legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act. On April 28, he vowed: "I will not be an automatic 60th vote and I would illustrate that by my position on employees' choice, also known as card check. I think it is a bad deal and I am opposed to it and would not vote to invoke cloture."

But on August 14, Ari Melber of the Nation asked Specter, "Is it fair to say that on the climate legislation, on Employees Free Choice, on the public option health care plan, these are all areas where you would be voting with the majority for cloture to have straight up or down votes?" Specter replied, "Yes. No doubt about those three issues. At all."

No doubt about voting for cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act? Specter's apparent flip raises questions of a quid pro quo, in which the senator who said "I have not traded my vote in the past and I would not do so now" gets in line exchange for stepped up White House support. Or perhaps both his most recent EFCA change of heart and the Obama-Biden fundraisers are due to feeling the heat from liberal primary challenger Joe Sestak. After all, the normally pro-union Specter's opposition to card check was in response to a conservative Republican primary challenge by Pat Toomey.

UPDATE: A group called the Workplace Fairness Institute is out with a petition and fairly damning video asking Specter to clarify his position.

View all comments (7) | Leave a comment

BD57| 8.18.09 @ 9:48AM

IMO, Specter would've flipped eventually & this is all part of the game.

The "I'm no automatic 60th vote" was put out there to deflect charges of opportunism (unsuccessfully) and (more likely) to position him where he could extract favors, etc. from others.

He would've flipped eventually b/c the primary challenge is now from the left - by playing the game, he's parlayed his supposed ambivalence into Administration help for his reelection effort.

Specter is about as good an advertisement for term limits as you're ever going to find.

Tim| 8.18.09 @ 9:49AM

Supporting Specter in 2004, another lasting Bush legacy. Everything he touched turned to shit.

Tim| 8.18.09 @ 9:50AM

I beg your pardon, I meant to write "sh*t".

Tim| 8.18.09 @ 9:50AM

I beg your pardon, I meant to write "sh*t".

Aaron| 8.18.09 @ 10:08AM

Whatever it takes to maintain job security. Its sort of like someone who has an affair with someone else who is married. That person gets divorced and then they now get married. What makes them think there is any loyalty in the new partnership? Its all one sided.

Spinning| 8.18.09 @ 12:40PM

I can't keep track of all the flipping and reports of flipping on this issue or others. I don't care any more -- just know he can't be trusted on anything so why bother paying any attention to him?