Specter's Dilemna

By Fester

Recently I decided to register my opinion on Senator Specter's policy positions as revealed by his voting and legislation record. I walked over to his Pittsburgh office and spoke with a very nice junior staffer at the front desk. She was trying to answer phones, talk to walk-ins and prep an e-mail to D.C. In my three minute conversation, I first told the staffer that I applauded Senator Specter's decision to co-sponsor the State Secrets Protection Act with Sen. Leahey (D-Vt) and others. I don't think she was aware of that action, but she had me write my comment down.

She then stepped away for a moment to help an elderly gentleman with a petition to increase medical/pension benefits for WWII merchant mariners. I glanced over the counter and at the phone call scratch pad. This pad is just a rough count of public opinion as registered by phone calls, and politically it was brutal. Half a dozen tallies for "I will never vote for you again," another dozen running against the stimulus vote, a few concerning constituent service issues, three complaining about potholes, and a couple of singletons on random issues, much like my initial comment.

She turned back to me, and I mentioned that I applauded and appreciated Senator Specter's vote for the stimulus package. She said that was the first positive comment on the stimulus that she had heard all day, and could I please write that down so it could be forwarded with the rest of the messages, or at least the message content counts.

As I noted earlier this week, Senator Specter is planning to run for re-election but to get there, he first has to get through a highly probable primary challenge from the right. I think he or his strategists think that he can beat back any conservative challenger and that the biggest challenge is the general election given current registration trends in Pennsylvania. I am not so sure given that the Pennsylvania primary is a closed primary and the Republican Party has been hemoraging the voters who make up Specter's Republican base --- suburban fiscal conservatives, who either don't care about 'social' issues or are social liberals. If Specter clears the primary, he'll count on bringing the GOP home, as well as picking off quite a few moderate Democrats and suburban swing voters in Philly.

However, Rasmussen has some very interesting polling out that highlights the costs of Spectering:

A look inside the numbers shows the problem for Specter may be even more significant. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Republican voters in the state are less likely to vote for Specter. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, just 27% are more likely to support the long-time incumbent while 48% are less likely to do so....
In Pennsylvania, 69% of Republicans oppose the package while 73% of Democrats favor it. Those not affiliated with either major party are evenly divided.

The Pittsburgh Business Times highlights a Quinnipiac poll that further supports the Specter Dilemna:

Forty-three percent of voters polled by Quinnipiac University said they did not think Specter deserves to be reelected, compared to 40 percent who said he was entitled to keep his job. But 56 percent of voters said they approved of the job Specter is doing. That approval rating goes up to 62 percent among Democrats, higher than the Republican support rate of 55 percent, the poll found.

That is a very very nasty vice for Specter to be in.

Democrats are basically saying: "Yeah, we like him well enough, but we could do better with Democrat X" while Republicans are basically saying: "Screw him, we'll vote for him holding our noses, but we want someone better in Republican Y." Any move that he makes means he loses electoral support on one of his flanks.

Hugging the base will probably not heal enough wounds fast enough to keep a viable primary challenge from being launched while losing critical general election supporters to a generic Democrat, and being a reliable Obama vote may or may not help in the general, but it guarantees him a strong primary challenge.

Specter will be the victim of the consolidation of ideological coherence between both of the parties. His brand of Republicanism makes almost no sense anymore as there are not enough cross-cutting issues of internal political incoherence for him to survive on.

Comments

[zak822]

"Specter will be the victim of the consolidation of ideological coherence between both of the parties. "

Good. I'm done with his talking one way on issues that concern me, then voting another.

I'll take my chances with whatever Democrat takes his seat. Hopefully it won't be a clone of Bob Casey, which would amount to no real change at all.