Arlen Specter
By | December 17, 2009 | 8:55 am
On the topic of his party's chances in next year's elections, Robert Menendez is a study in resolute optimism. Not that he has much choice. Mr. Menendez, New Jersey's junior senator, chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which recruits and provides financial and political support for the party's U.S. Senate candidates. Optimism is part of the job. But in 2010, Mr. Menendez will have to deal with some unpleasant realities that his predecessor, the irrepressible... READ MORE»
At Barack Obama’s town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Tuesday, an older man who identified himself as a Republican calmly expressed to the president his concern that a government-run “public option” might undermine private health insurers because, “Who can compete with the... READ MORE»
How many candidates for Congress—Democratic and Republican—have you heard loudly insist that they don’t believe in party labels, just in doing the right thing? And how many of them, once elected, end up voting with their party pretty much all the time?... READ MORE»
How many candidates for Congress—Democratic and Republican—have you heard loudly insist that they don’t believe in party labels, just in doing the right thing? And how many of them, once elected, end up voting with their party pretty much all the time? It’s an absurd dance. Voters like hearing about “independence” and “bipartisanship,” so candidates indulge them, only to take office and immediately morph into the party-line loyalists they just spent a year swearing... READ MORE»
In the fall of 1991, the political right was gunning for Arlen Specter. Four years earlier, he’d infuriated them by lending a critical assist to the successful campaign to kill Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination and he’d done little in the intervening time to make peace with them.... READ MORE»
In the fall of 1991, the political right was gunning for Arlen Specter. Four years earlier, he’d infuriated them by lending a critical assist to the successful campaign to kill Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination and he’d done little in the intervening time to make peace with them. Now, with Specter facing re-election in 1992, they were threatening him with a primary challenge. Specter seemed likely to withstand the challenge from Stephen Friend, a... READ MORE»
It's easy to brand Arlen Specter's decision to leave the Republican Party—a move directly precipitated by his realization that his career would end with next year's Pennsylvania Senate primary unless he left the G.O.P.—a nakedly unprincipled act of political... READ MORE»
It's easy to brand Arlen Specter's decision to leave the Republican Party-a move directly precipitated by his realization that his career would end with next year's Pennsylvania Senate primary unless he left the G.O.P.-a nakedly unprincipled act of political survival. And that's just what Specter's critics, on the right, on the left, and in the middle, have been doing this week. "Self-preservation in the first order" and "a cold, crass political calculation" is how G.O.P.... READ MORE»
A reader sends along this memo from Arlen Specter’s (brief) 1996 presidential campaign. In it, consultant Roger Stone outlines a strategy based on the notion that the "strength of the ‘Religious Right’ in Republican primaries is overestimated.”... READ MORE»
Back in 1992, there was no senator that Democrats—particularly female Democrats—were more eager to beat than Arlen Specter, who the previous fall had listened to Anita Hill's claims of sexual harassment and responded by accusing Hill of "flat-out perjury."... READ MORE»
Back in 1992, there was no senator that Democrats-particularly female Democrats-were more eager to beat than Arlen Specter, who the previous fall had listened to Anita Hill's claims of sexual harassment and responded by accusing Hill of "flat-out perjury." And they almost did beat him-with a candidate named Lynn Yeakel, a previously unknown fund-raiser for women's charities who was inspired to run after watching Specter browbeat Hill during her testimony in Clarence Thomas' Supreme... READ MORE»
Arlen Specter and the Democratic Party leadership cut a deal that makes plenty of sense on the surface: Specter is rescued from a doomed Republican primary campaign that would have ended his 30-year Senate career next year, while Democrats pick up what will be (after Al Franken is finally seated) their 60th vote in the Senate—enough, at last, to kill any and all Republican fili... READ MORE»
Arlen Specter and the Democratic Party leadership cut a deal that makes plenty of sense on the surface: Specter is rescued from a doomed Republican primary campaign that would have ended his 30-year Senate career next year, while Democrats pick up what will be (after Al Franken is finally seated) their 60th vote in the Senate--enough, at last, to kill any and all Republican filibusters. But it's entirely possible that neither Specter nor the... READ MORE»
Probably one of the few people in New York who knows how Arlen Specter feels right now is Michael Bloomberg. (Specter was a Democrat until 1966, then he became a Republican, and then today he became a Democrat again.) So, what did the mayor have to say about Specter leaving the Republican Party? “I saw it in the news.” Then he turned to take the next question from another reporter.... READ MORE»
