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.
