Arlen Specter now a Dem – sort of; GOP stunned

Does Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter even know his own self?

A month AFTER saying he would vote against the Employee Free Choice Act, damn the union pressure, NOW, he says he’s changing parties and becoming a Democrat Well, sort of, perhaps.

Specter would be the 59th GOP Senator, increasing the move to seat Al Franken from Minnesota as soon as possible.

But, hold the phone. Specter says he’s not a guaranteed 60th vote for closure.

So, if he’s not a guaranteed vote, how much did Majority Leader Harry Reid, et al, “pay” him in terms of committee assignments to switch? The negotiations have been going on for some time.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), a fellow moderate, didn’t seem surprised. On the national level, she says, “you haven't certainly heard warm encouraging words of how [the GOP] views moderates. Either you are with us or against us.

“Ultimately we’re heading to having the smallest political tent in history they way things are unfolding. We should have learned from the 2006 election, which I was a party of. I happened to win with 74 percent of the vote in a blue-collar state, but no one asked me, ‘How did you do it?’ Seems to me that would have been the first question that would have come from the Republican Party to find out so we could avoid further losses.”

If she wasn’t surprised, non-moderate top dogs in the GOP Senate structure were totally surprised, including Texas’ often-clueless John Cornyn, the man responsible for getting more GOP senators elected.

Maybe they should have been, especially since switch negotiations had been ongoing, and they had the Jim Jeffords example from the start of this decade.

Specter offers more insight on his switch.

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.

So, why didn’t Specter do the “independent” route, like Jeffords or Joe Lieberman?

Well, for one thing, they did it not too long after being re-elected, not in the face of an election. Jeffords has retired, and Joementum? We’ll see in four years.

As for Specter and the Democratic Party? Former Constitution Center CEO Joe Torsella, the one announced Democrat in the Senate race, said that he would remain in the Democratic primary against Specter for now.

Meanwhile, will somebody besides Pat Toomey enter the GOP primary? Surely. How many somebodies, and how moderate they are, remains to be seen.