Finally the pun sticks: Arlen Specter has jumped the shark. In his most self-serving and risible move since the Magic Bullet Theory, Specter will become a Democrat and run accordingly in 2010. Tautologically speaking, no party should want a Senator who no longer wants to be a party member, but it was just yesterday that Rod wrote this:
what are the Republican party elites thinking the right thing to do is? Rail against financiers on behalf of the middle-class and working-class taxpayers, who are going to be soaked for years because of what those Wall Street SOBs did? Oh, no: they want to jettison social and religious conservatives.
Seriously: are there any sane right-wing populists out there who will challenge party incumbents in 2010 primaries? Stand up, get organized! Even if you have to run as a Democrat.
Not quite what one had in mind. Two very dangerous and bad things seem just a little more likely today: that the Democratic party will increasingly become the party of doubling down on the political economy of Bushism — same old FAIL, brand new socialism — and the Republican party will increasingly become the angry inch left over. And, yes, in the wake of the latest GM developments, I’m getting more and more uncomfortably comfortable with the ‘s’-word. If split goverment/labor ownership of a corporation isn’t socialism, nothing is.
April 28th, 2009 | 4:39 pm
James, Sen. Spincter is politically doomed as a GOPer in Pennsyltucky! But I have no dog in this hunt; you are correct about the new socio-political “comfort zone;” I am building shelter deep in the woods and inviting Cormac McCarthy for dinner.
April 28th, 2009 | 5:59 pm
California may lead the way, as it has in the past for good and bad: a dominant party unable to fulfill any promise and an opposition out of step with the voters yet beholden to its primary voters.
April 28th, 2009 | 6:06 pm
[...] http://www.newmajority.com/ShowScroll.aspx?ID=13e86822-61d6-459a-9aab-4fc32fc9acef [...]
April 28th, 2009 | 6:57 pm
Specter got this word from Pennsylvania pols after voting for trillions of $$$$ of wasteful spending in response to appeals by America’s first socialist-in-chief: You’re doomed as a Republican in 2010. Republicans hate your guts. Toomey (spelling?) will take the Republican Senate primary easily.
More generally: “Moderate” has become an empty term in American politics. As the Democrats keep shoving leftwards, what does moderate mean? Shoving leftwards half as fast????
From now on in America, it’s the socialist/Communist party versus classical liberal/American conservative party.
Back to Specter: He’ll lose big time to a leftist Democrat in the primary. I say good riddance to him.
April 29th, 2009 | 4:51 am
I suspect the Democrats will fare somewhat better than being “the party of doubling down on the political economy of Bushism”. Other than bare assertions on your part, I don’t see much evidence of that.
However, I must ask, why haven’t you written about your visit with Hillary Clinton, photographed here:
http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/qadhafi_suit.jpg
April 29th, 2009 | 1:21 pm
I’ve been saying for years, James– socialism will come not as a result of people’s revolution but because the only part of our country with real power, the moneyed class, demands it. Socialism isn’t going to come with a storming of the Bastille. It’ll come creeping in the back door, because banks and other huge corporations come to realize they can enjoy ever-greater profits with greater integration into the government.
May 1st, 2009 | 1:31 am
It isn’t the banks and huge corporations. It’s the leftist billionaires who don’t want anyone else to have a crack at the big time…and who want cheap servants by impoverishing everyone in America, except for themselves.
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