A Specter Is Haunting The Democratic Party

One of the themes dominating media coverage of Senator Arlen Specter's decision to leave the Republican Party is that the GOP has become hostile to so-called "moderates." Apparently there's no room in the Republican Party for someone who is pro-choice on abortion, supports the Obama stimulus bill, and wants to see embryonic stem-cell research expanded.

More troubling than what there isn't room for in the Republican Party, from where I sit, is what there IS room for in the Democratic Party. Specter's relatively liberal voting record on social issues and Amtrak funding are all well and good, but this is a guy who recently referred to calls for an independent commission of inquiry to look into Bush-era abuses of civil liberties as "something they do in Latin America in banana republics." He was a strong supporter of Bush's Supreme Court nominees, along with the Iraq War authorization. He has not flat-out rejected the Employee Free Choice Act (legislation that will make it easier to unionize), but like other "independent" Democrats will probably only support a watered down version.

And while President Obama is supposedly all about ethics and transparency in government, he's not too concerned about the fact that Specter failed to recuse himself in the vote on the bank bailout even though his wife directs a company that benefited to the tune of over $45 million from the bill. (In addition, as reported by Politico, Specter secured $65 million in federal funding for an organization that hired his wife shortly after the funding came through.).

The late Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, who belonged to the "Democratic Wing" of the Democratic Party, once told other Dems that "If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them." If you're a PA Democrat, in 2010 the choice of a Conservative Republican vs. the Democrat Specter reprents a kind of lesser-evilism gone wild. Not only is Specter not a Wellstone, but he may not even be a Herb Kohl.

Specter wanted out of the Republican Party because polls showed that he couldn't win the PA Republican primary and he was concerned with the Party's shift to the Right. He should have added something else: he could feel comfortable caucusing with the Dems because they too have shifted to the Right.