Arlen Specter is cooler than you

As you may have heard by now, Arlen Specter has decided to switch parties, leaving the GOP to run for reelection in 2010 as a Democrat. In the short term, this gives the Democrats 59 seats in the Senate, which will become 60 once Norm Coleman recognizes the inevitable and Al Franken is seated. In the long term, it sets up a potential Toomey-Specter rematch, this time in the general election.

Sen. Specter’s decision to switch parties will have a broad range of consequences. First, it eventually give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, allowing them to pass pretty much any bill they want. Or, more accurately, any bill that Specter wants passed. In the statement he released today, Specter emphasized that his loyalty was to the people in Pennsylvania he represents and to the country, not to any one party. He has shown a willingness to cross party lines in the past, most notably when he broke from the Republican caucus earlier this hear to support President Obama’s stimulus package. While Democrats are hopeful that this will enable them to steamroll any filibuster, this outlook may be too optimistic; despite changing his party affiliations, I don’t expect Specter to blindly follow Harry Reid’s lead.

Nevertheless, this is still pretty bad news for the Republican Party. After having gotten their asses kicked in elections across the board in 2008, the Republicans are in desperate need of reaching out to moderates, as Reagan was able to do in 1980. Bush was a historically bad President, and the Democrats were able to largely run against him and his record; Republicans can’t bank on Obama being as trailblazingly terrible, and will need to get support for their own policies and initiatives, not just an anti-Obama movement. To do this, they’re going to need to reach out and attract voters who leaned to the left in ’08, if not Democrats then at least independents. Specter’s defection is a blow to this; if one of the more moderate Republicans is leaving the party as it swings dangerously towards the right, how can they hope to attract other moderates? As Specter stated in his press release, over the past year 200,000 Pennsylvanians have switched registration from the GOP to the Democratic Party; Specter’s defection will not likely stem this tide, but rather could possibly even enhance it.

Republicans have, predictably, come out attacking Specter, choosing to cast his decision as a move based on self-preservation rather than a reaction to the failings of their party. Michael Steele, Lindsey Graham, and others seem to have taken it for granted that Specter would lose in the 2010 primary election to Pat Toomey, whom he is currently trailing in polls of likely GOP primary voters. Specter was able to hold off a challenge from Toomey in 2004, but as the Republican Party has swung to the right he has been isolated in the center, vulnerable to a primary challenge. By joining the Democrat caucus, he has a much easier road to reelection; while I don’t know for certain, it would not surprise me if his defection were conditional on having the full support of the Democratic Party not only in the 2010 general election, but against any primary challengers. And in a general election against Pat Toomey, Specter should have very little difficulty; in 2006 the conservative Democrat Bob Casey massacred the nauseatingly-conservative Rick Santorum, and I see no reason a Specter-Toomey showdown would be any less one sided. I’m going to vote for him.