THE DAILY BLADE: Specter The Defector
Blame it on his “unparalleled instinct for self-preservation,” but Arlen Specter has been called a lot of unflattering names since switching parties: “Specter the Defector” (this, for the second time, as this is his second switcheroo); “Benedict Arlen”; opportunistic; traitor; turncoat; and – without any apparent anti-Semitic intent – Judas.
Reactions to Specter’s jump across the aisle ranged from hysterical (former Bush 43 speechwriter David Frum pronounces it “too severe a catastrophe to qualify as a “wake-up call”) to worried (Weekly Standard executive editor and FOX News pundit Fred Barnes frets that the defection is “a crushing setback for the GOP, instantly reducing what limited power Republicans have in the Senate”) to ebullient (Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said it was a "game changing" moment). But Spector cannot be counted on to welcome his new Democrat overloards, and warned that he will not be a guaranteed vote for cloture: “My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats (than) I have been for the Republicans.”
As the Los Angeles Times’ Doyle McManus puts it:
Arlen Specter was never much of a Republican. He won't be much of a Democrat either. …
Conservatives dubbed him a RINO: Republican In Name Only. Now he has crossed the aisle to join the Democratic majority, but Specter acknowledged Tuesday that he'll be something of a DINO. Asked whether he plans to attend meetings of the Democratic caucus, he looked momentarily stricken. "Give me a week to think about it," he said.
In the short-term, Spector’s switch doesn’t push the Dems past the filibuster hurdle, because Norm Coleman's appeal of a state appellate court’s ruling giving the win to Al Franken won’t be heard by the MN Supreme Court until June 1st – and his campaign manager has indicated that the election dispute could go all the way to the highest court in the land. Should that occur, MN Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) may refrain from signing the election certificate until Coleman has exhausted all legal avenues.
So “for now,” writes Barnes, “Republicans will need to recruit one or more Democratic dissenters to block the Obama agenda”:
This is difficult though not impossible. Several major bills are in serious trouble because a handful of Senate Democrats have misgivings. Example: card check, which would gut secret ballots in union organizing elections. Another example is "cap and trade" to limit carbon emissions. But should these measures fail this year or next, gains in the 2010 election would give Democrats a second chance to pass them.
For his part, Pat Toomey indignantly sputters that “a central question will be whether Mr. Specter can be trusted on anything” and urges PA voters “to ask themselves now is whether Mr. Specter is, in fact, devoted to any principle other than his own re-election.”
WaPo media analyst-cum-political pundit Howard Kurtz makes pretty much the same point:
The Pennsylvania senator says he will continue to follow his conscience, but he has just stiffed the voters of his state, the way every opportunistic party-switcher does. A majority of them voted for a Republican to represent them in D.C. for six years, and suddenly they've got a Democrat who will work with Obama's party. …
Specter says the Republican Party has moved "far to the right," and that may be true, but the obvious motive here is that he concluded he couldn't beat Pat Toomey in next year's GOP primary. (He admitted as much, calling his chances "bleak.") So Pennsylvania voters will get a belated opportunity to accept or reject his move.
In fact, after Specter’s bait-and-switch, some of his donors are asking for their money back, reports The Washington Times.
And in the last analysis, Specter’s cynical maneuvering may all be for naught.
The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza ticks off “a few critical - and unanswered – questions,” about his viability as a candidate including: Will Specter have a challenger in the Dem primary? And a historical look at the demographic shifts in the state leads RealClearPolitics' Jay Cost to conclude, “the political dynamic in the Keystone State has shifted, not so much against the GOP (at least on the presidential level), but against Arlen Specter, who has - during his twenty eight years in the Senate - failed to develop a durable political connection to Western Pennsylvania.”
Depends What The Meaning Of “Torture” Is: Part II
Ever since the Obama administration released memos describing the types of enhanced interrogation techniques used by the C.I.A. to extract information from top-level al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other terrorists, there has been a running debate on a myriad of questions, including:
† Whether the memos should have been released (video link);
† Whether all or just a few of these enhanced techniques meet some arbitrary threshold for torture, even when used on Islamic terrorists who have been trained to resist them;
† Whether they are more effective than less controversial methods of interrogation - and the related questions of why they were needed if established methods were adequate, and how we could ever know one way or the other;
† Whether aggressive interrogation and rendition stoked the resentments of Islamofascists to make us “less safe” - and the obverse question of whether abandoning these methods makes us less safe);
† Whether they are always morally wrong and illegal, even if they are effective - and the related questions of whether they are morally wrong for the U.S. to engage in, irrespective of efficacy and the practices of other nations);
† Whether these methods were as wrong and illegal during the years following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks as they are now regarded to be, most notably by the current commander-in-chief;
† Whether those hitherto silent on the matter can deny their own complicity while calling for truth commissions or prosecutions; and
† Whether we are a nation of Torquemadas because the use of enhanced interrogation techniques was an open secret (though the actual protocols were top secret until last month) and did not appear to “shock the conscience” of the vast majority of the public then – or eight years later.
Despite promises of a transparent government, President Barack Obama has been very selective in the information he has chosen to release, so the citizenry remains too uninformed to form an opinion on any of these questions – and, frankly, so are the vast majority of the pundits and analysts who churned out the hundreds of thousands of words The Stiletto has read about “torture” over the past couple of weeks all-too-often without citing any evidence for their assertions.
As luck would have it, an unintentional snafu provided a much-needed reality-check for us all. Earlier in the week, people on both sides of the Hudson River were scared witless by what turned out to be a photo-op of Air Force One and an escort of two fighter jets flying so close to office buildings near Ground Zero that “windows rattled” and people on both sides of the Hudson River poured out of their offices and ran for their lives. As their hearts were thumping, their lungs were aching and they were desperately trying to will their legs to move faster than they ever had before, do you think a single one of them paused to ponder how many times KSM had been waterboarded and whether it was wrong to “torture” him? No, they were wondering whether they were about to die because our government did not do whatever it takes to find out about a terrorist act in time to stop it. At moments like this, the average American knows - even if academicians, the media elite and our elected officials do not know, or have forgotten – it’s us against the terrorists.
Life Imitates Lysistrata
The women of Kenya are taking a page from Aristophanes to put an end to post-election violence between partisans of the country’s president and prime minister, reports CNN:
Activists in the East African nation are urging women to withhold sex for a week to protest the growing divide in Kenya's coalition government.
"We are asking even sex workers to join the cause, even if we have to pay them ourselves," said Patricia Nyaundi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya.
The campaign was organized by G-10, an umbrella group for women's organizations. It called on the wives of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to join the cause. …
In addition to targeting politicians, activists say, the campaign aims to draw spouses into the conversation and nudge them into demanding change.
"Major decisions are made during pillow talk," Nyaundi said. "We have to make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of this country."
[Hat Tip: The Heel, an Ivy-educated attorney with a prestigious New York firm, and occasional contributor to this blog.]
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