Results tagged “Arlen Specter” from Argento's Front Stoop

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter on leaving the Republican party:

"I have been a Republican since 1966. I have been working extremely hard for the party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.

"Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans."

Arlen hasn't left the Republican party; the Republican party left him.

This photo, from last year's campaign might have offered a hint:

Look at the expression on Arlen's face. Says all that needs to be said.

Arlen was going to face a tough challenge from wingnut Pat Toomey. He probably would have lost a GOP primary, seeing as GOP primary's are dominated by right-wingers. Toomey can't win a general election. Voters in Pennsylvania, working people, have had enough of the conservative economic policies that leave them behind.

Arlen didn't want to be left behind.

All he did was jump a sinking ship.

Often, our own U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., gets criticized for his moderate stances, irritating those on the left and the right with his willingness to try to get something done.

He has come out in favor of the stimulus bill, albeit a compromise bill hammered out by a small group of senate moderates.

He explains his position in a Washington Post op-ed piece here.

It begins: "I am supporting the economic stimulus package for one simple reason: The country cannot afford not to take action.

"The unemployment figures announced Friday, the latest earnings reports and the continuing crisis in banking make it clear that failure to act will leave the United States facing a far deeper crisis in three or six months. By then the cost of action will be much greater -- or it may be too late."

Arlen gets it. How come the right-wingers, whose fiscal policies of the past 28 years have led to this disaster, don't?

Still, Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman argues that the centrist approach doesn't go far enough to fill the hole we've dug ourselves. Krugman, who has been right in calling the shots in this economic disaster, says President Obama erred in trying to forge a bi-partisan coalition in favor of the stimulus bill and that his attempts to do so watered down the Senate version to the point of reducing its effectiveness.

Krugman writes: "So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren't good.

"For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. 'Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,' he declared on Saturday, and 'the scale and scope of this plan is right.'

"No, they didn't, and no, it isn't."

Read his piece here.