The GOP's new favorite Democrat [updated below]

After the change, hardline NROite Mark Hemingway quipped: "I read that he was switching parties, but I was disappointed to learn he's still a Democrat."

It may take some time for anger at his switch to fade among others on the right, but once that's over he's bound to become Republicans' new favorite Democratic Senator when he bucks the new party.  I know I'll keep my popcorn ready.

It'll be the same as how he used to be Democrats' favorite Republican short of Lincoln Chafee (also a fine open-minded Senator).  For instance Specter recently said Norm Coleman would be a better Senator than Al Franken, which while infuriating to the left has the virtue of being true.

(That said, Coleman's legal challenges of Minnesota's results appear arbitrary and bogus. As the lesser of two evils, I wish he'd won, but that's not where the votes are)

Update: Having actually read the interview, titled "Specter Backs Coleman for Senate"...

Interviewer: With your departure from the Republican Party, there are no more Jewish Republicans in the Senate. Do you care about that?

Arlen Specter: I sure do. There’s still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner.

Interviewer: Which seems about as likely at this point as Jerry Seinfeld’s joining the Senate.


Arlen Specter: Well, it was about as likely as my becoming a Democrat.

I believe this is a case of an editor picking an inappropraite headline.  It reads like a joke that was never meant as a serious comment on Minnesota courts "doing justice".

I'm sure Specter personally prefers Coleman, as a fellow centrist.  But his official position--which will probably come out in clarifying remarks--likely won't choose sides in the legal fight.

Link blag

I endorse Will Wilkinson's ramblings on libertarian democraphobia.

Daily Beast looks back at the wackiest moments of Michele Bachmann, batshit crazy extraordinaire. Spoiler: She sees this as her divine calling!

Also, a manifesto for young voters.

TPM: Et tu, DeMint? Cato has more thoughts.

(video) Obama gets more respect from the press than Bush did. My guess is reporters stood for Bush during his first term. After 2005, not so much. I'll further speculate it's in part because they'd grown very accustomed to him by 2008, he seldom had anything bright to say, and at this point by any reasonable standard his presidency was a terrible failure.

Criticizing Obama shuts down conversations? I guess it's like how those of us who objected to Bush's policies when they were popular were said to hate America, etc.

WSJ: Meet Desirée Rogers, keeper of the Obama brand.

Ordinary Mark Thompson is serious about American exceptionalism, in a good way. William Brafford objects to the term.

It's official: The Obama administration loves MSNBC.

Switching sides

To those who think Specter makes no principled stands

Read his article in the NY Review of books.

How does a selfish hack with no principles—as folks from across the spectrum are making him out to be—get off writing something like that at age 80? What's in it for him, power-wise?

I'm pleased that, as a swing vote, he has the Obama administration's ear and they seem willing to listen. Bushies would never have listened to talk of limiting executive power.

Specter roundup

The Hill: Dems upset about seniority.

There are ripple effects for staff.

A TMVer cries DINO.

The hard left is gearing up to oppose Specter—to which I say:



The Post notes that, on his first day as Dem, he voted against Obama's budget. I, of course, approve.

Obama and Biden welcome him.

Meghan McCain was let down. Christine Todd Whitman admires and regrets. NYT gets letters.

Sen. Inhoe (R-OK) says this is the first visible evidence of a GOP comeback in 2010. And I'm a monkey's fraternal twin. Yglesias makes some interesting points, though.

Link blag

Jim Manzi makes the most compelling argument against torture.

1-800-[GET OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY]... Cato's David Boaz bemoans.

Speaking of tax-and-spend, the Leftopia of Washington, D.C. is now charging residents for parking in their own driveway.

Mexican Senate passes bill decriminalizing drug possession for personal use.

Megan examines why general practitioners are underpaid.

Giving up on politics, a libertarian brainstorms new frontiers of freedom.

Hathos alert: Sarah Palin is a twitter.

An environmentally-friendly pizza box.

Masturbation has fatal consequences (Le livre sans titre, 1844)

Another boring press conference?

Politico: "Obama works to avoid being exciting"

Andrew: "I'm beginning to regret watching this terribly dull and unnecessary pseudo-event."

A New York Economist blogger:

I'm starting to wonder after last night's presser, what the purpose of these things are. Barack Obama's first few prime-time appearances before the press were refreshing in their novelty; George Bush seemed allergic to reporters' unscripted, live questions. But do they really accomplish anything? Even when a reporter peacocks with a "tough" question (that he's obviously very pleased with himself for asking), the president can filibuster without saying much. Mr Obama did just that many times last night. Unlike his predecessor, he did allow a few follow-ups, but he still didn't say much that surprised anyone who has been alive since November. I'm starting to feel suckered into watching an hour-long campaign advertisement.

Apparently the hidden hypnosis is wearing thin.

But seriously, better too many press conferences that we can skip watching rather than not nearly enough, as Bush gave us.

Library Grape embeds the video and other reax. Transcript here.

I appreciated the part on Arlen Specter and Republicans:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. On Senator Specter's switch to the Democratic Party, you said you were thrilled.

I guess nobody should be surprised about that. But how big a deal is this really?

Some Republicans say it is huge. They believe it's a game changer. They say that if you get the 60 votes in the Senate, that you will be able to ride roughshod over any opposition, and that we're on the verge of, as one Republican put it, one-party rule.

Do you see it that way? And also, what do you think his switch says about the state of the Republican Party?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, first of all, I think very highly of Arlen Specter. I think he's got a record of legislative accomplishment that is as good as any member of the Senate.

And I think he's always had a strong independent streak. I think that was true when he was a Republican; I think that will be true when he's a Democrat. He was a very blunt in saying I couldn't count on him to march lockstep on every single issue. And so he's going to still have strong opinions, as many Democrats in the Senate do. I've been there. It turns out all the senators have very strong opinions. And I don't think that's going to change.

I do think that having Arlen Specter in the Democratic Caucus will liberate him to cooperate on critical issues, like health care, like infrastructure and job creation, areas where his inclinations were to work with us but he was feeling pressure not to.

And I think the vote on the recovery act was a classic example. Ultimately, he thought that was the right thing to do. And he was fiercely berated within his own party at the time for having taken what I consider to be a very sensible step.

So -- so I think it's a -- overall a positive.

Now, I am under no illusions that suddenly I'm going to have a rubber-stamp Senate. I've got Democrats who don't agree with me on everything. And that's how it should be. Congress is a coequal branch of government. Every senator who's there, whether I agree with them or disagree with them, I think truly believes that they are doing their absolute best to represent their constituencies.

And we've got regional differences, and we've got some parts of the country that are affected differently by certain policies.

And those have to be respected, and there's going to have to be compromise and give-and-take on all of these issues.

I do think that, to my Republican friends, I -- I want them to realize that me reaching out to them has been genuine. I can't sort of define bipartisanship as simply being willing to accept certain theories of theirs that we tried for eight years and didn't work, and the American people voted to change. But there are a whole host of areas where we can work together.

And -- and I've said this to people like Mitch McConnell. I said, "Look, on health care reform, you may not agree with me that I've -- we should have a public plan. That may be philosophically just too much for you to swallow. On the other hand, there are some areas like reducing the cost of medical malpractice insurance where you do agree with me. If I'm taking some of your ideas and giving you credit for good ideas, the fact that you didn't get 100 percent can't be a reason every single time to oppose my position." And if that is how bipartisanship is defined -- a -- a -- a situation in which, basically, wherever there are philosophical differences, I have to simply go along with ideas that have been rejected by the American people in an historic election, you know, we're probably not going to make progress.

If, on the other hand, the definition is that we're open to each other's ideas, there are going to be some differences, the majority will probably be determinative when it comes to resolving just hard- core differences that we can't resolve but there is a whole host of other areas where we can work together, then I think we can make progress.

QUESTION: Is the Republican Party in the desperate straits that Arlen Specter seems to think it is?

MR. OBAMA: You know, politics in America changes very quick. And I'm a big believer that things are never as good as they seem, and never as bad as they seem. You're talking to a guy who was 30 points down in the polls during a primary in Iowa so -- so I never -- I don't believe in crystal balls.

I do think that our administration has taken some steps that have restored confidence in the American people that we're moving in the right direction, and that simply opposing our approach on every front is probably not a good political strategy.

Link blag

Libertarian dogma led the Fed astray?

Olympia Snowe opines in the Times: We Didn't Have to Lose Arlen Specter.

publius explains why Club for Growth Republicans are so counterproductive compared to the leftroots.

In analyzing Specter's move, Maddow is hypocritical.

Stephen Walt has a long but interesting post up on Israel and the "treason of the hawks".

Not-so-breaking-news: There is a negative relationship between high state+local taxes and economic growth.

Specter laments club-for-shrinkage

Chafee winning in '06 with more money sounds unlikely to me, even though he was a better Senator than the Democrat who replaced him. Under Bush, Republicans were simply to unpopular at that point in RI. But I take Specter's broader point.

The Club's response...

"Senator Specter has confirmed what we already knew - he's a liberal devoted to more spending, more bailouts, and less economic freedom. Thanks to him, Democrats will now be able to steamroll their big government agenda through the Senate.
"This also shows how unprincipled he is. Just a few weeks ago, he stated quite clearly that he was remaining a Republican because he thought he had 'a more important role to play there.' And he said 'the United States very desperately needs a two-party system.'

"This cynical play for political survival calls into question whether Pennsylvania taxpayers can believe anything Arlen Specter says. If his only principle is personal ambition, can he really be trusted with the serious issues that face our country?"

"The Club for Growth PAC enthusiastically endorsed Pat Toomey for Senate in Pennsylvania when Specter was pretending to be a Republican. Club members will be even more committed to Toomey's candidacy now that Specter has revealed his true identity."

Nate Silver has more numbers on what the switch may mean in practice.

Quote of the day II

“Ultimately, we're heading to having the smallest political tent in history, the way things are unfolding,” —Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-MN)

I would just mention the Federalists and Whigs as having been a bit smaller, at one point.

Michael Steele's statement

Via TPM:

Some in the Republican Party are happy about this. I am not.

Let's be honest-Senator Specter didn't leave the GOP based on principles of any kind. He left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record.

Republicans look forward to beating Sen. Specter in 2010, assuming the Democrats don't do it first."

Up yours, man. You were supposed to be pro-moderate. If Specter is left-wing, I am too. Enjoy your rump of a party.