So much schadenfreude I have to pack some away as leftovers

Oh man, the hits just keep on coming.

Just as we reach Obama's 100th Day of Waking Up Knowing He's P-ssing Off Rush (Since FDR, the First 100 Days of a Presidency carries symbolic value: the more a President gets done the more successful he looks, ergo the harder it gets for his critics to shred him), he gets an anniversary present in the form of Arlen Specter deciding he'd had enough of the Republican Party. Arlen "Magic Bullet" Specter is now a Democrat.

This isn't unprecedented to have sitting politicians jump sides: Ben Nighthorse Campbell switched from D to R back in 1995, and Jim Jeffords went Indy when the Bush the Lesser GOP treated him like, well a Dem.

There'd been speculation for a good while (since 2006, actually) that some of the moderate/centrist Republicans might make a move like this, especially as their own party was driving them out of office. Examples include Lincoln Chafee, Wayne Gilchrest, and a few others that have been targeted with harsh primary challenges by the likes of the Club for Greed. What happens is that the Club for Greed notices any Republican refusing to stick to the "Cut Taxes" script, quickly labels them "RINOs" and a threat to party unity, finds a hard-line anti-tax pro-life candidate to challenge in a primary (something few incumbants face), runs a hard-right campaign that forces the incumbant to turn further right on the political spectrum, and because the challenger actually gets more party support (!) the challenger either wins or else loses in a close nailbiter. The GOP candidate then goes on to the general election in a weakened state, because either the far-right candidate is now running and is unpalatable to the general voting public (as what happened to Gilchrest's seat) or the surviving incumbant has been forced to accept an unpalatable platform and faces a greater chance of losing to a Democrat (as what happened to Chafee).

See, the problem is, the Club for Greed doesn't care. They don't care that fixating on an extremist ideology and forcing candidates further right than they should go would actually make their Republican allies LOSE SEATS and thus lose political power and prestige. They only care that they stay on message, and that the GOP stays on THEIR message. And then they think they can bully enough moderates into buy their trick pony show. Which is why every economic platform the Republicans have offered since 1980, 84, 88, 92, 96, 2000, 2004, and 2008 have been tax cuts, tax cuts, relaxed business regulations, and more tax cuts. Any Republican comes out and says "You know, tax cuts hadn't created jobs, and we need to raise funds to build more schools" and inside of ten seconds the Club for Greed will have a primary challenger signing up at the state courthouse.

Let us do be honest: Arlen Specter is only doing this for Arlen Specter. If there's anything an elected incumbant holds sacred, it's their own job security. Specter had already faced a Club-backed primary challenger before and barely held his own. Today, he's facing that same challenger and this time there's 200,000 fewer registered Republicans (those voters mostly switched to Democrats during the Obama-Hillary primary fight) who were the moderates keeping Specter safe. The prelimary polling had Toomey winning the primary (can't currently find the polling numbers, I think it was like 60 to 38 percent) all because the Pennsylvanian GOP was now thoroughly dominated by the Far Right. This is, by the by, a perfect example of what happens when you drive all the RINOs out: You end up losing, because now that Specter's a Democrat he can beat Toomey by a comfortable margin.

This isn't too big a win for Democrats. We're talking about Senators, who thrive on the self-inflated ego that they can be above partisanship and vote however they want. Specter isn't about to go completely DFH and vote liberal on every bill, although he will have to reconsider his stance on the EFCA that happens to be verrrrrrry popular in a blue-collar state like PA. All this talk about the Democrats now having a filibuster-proof majority is overlooking the fact a handful of Democratic (and Republican) centrists can and will vote against a far-left agenda.

This is however a massive loss for Republicans, no matter how they try to brush it off with a "good riddance" sneer. It never looks good for a party to have one of their own so openly and brazenly quit them to go join the other team (it hurt Clinton and the Democrats like hell when Campbell switched, as it made Gingrich's GOP Revolution look more unstoppable: Jeffords' escape so early in Bush the Lesser's term of office had hurt him, and it had to take 9/11 to stop the CW perception that Dubya was going to be a one-termer). It promotes the ever-growing meme that Reagan's Big Tent is shrinking until all that's left in the GOP are the wingnuts. And pretty soon the GOP won't be in a majority of the states, won't be anywhere near holding a congressional majority of any kind within the next 15-20 years. That Rovian dream of making the Republicans the "permanent majority party" will become the nightmare of a permanent Democratic majority instead, all because of the paradoxial acts by Rove to constantly appease the wingnut base above all else. As David Frum notes, it would have been better to have a majority party that appeases 60 percent of the base over a minority party that appeases 100 percent of the base... because that minority party will remain a POWERLESS minority party until scandal or another cultural shift takes place... which might be another 30-40 years the way the young voters are trending...

This is actually going to make it worse for the Republicans, and even moreso for those left in the Party still viewed as RINOs. There's talk now about the remaining two Senators that the Club for Greed mocked back in February for voting for Obama's stimulus bill and what could happen to them (actually, not much: Collins and Snowe are honestly two of the safest moderates in the GOP as there's no viable candidate the greedheads could dig up in their state to challenge them). But Specter's departure as noted earlier is bringing out a lot of the "goodbye so long good riddance and let the door hit your ass on the way out" talk among the wingnuts, and is even sparking dialogue that other so-called RINOs need to leave with Specter. Rush insists Sen. McCain should leave the party and take his pro-gay-marriage daughter with him. (personal note: Ahhh, Meghan, if only you were brunette, I might actually fantasize about you...) There could well be a major "litmus test" event within the GOP ranks to force the issue, where the Far Right will insist on their moderate bretheren to perform some embarrassing stunt that would completely alienate moderates from shore to shore. And to keep at it until the midterms in 2010, at which point they'll make a massive effort during primaries to run the RINOs out as best they can.

As I've said here and before, the wingnuts don't care. They genuinely believe that in order to win they actually have to NARROW their position, make it harsher, make it less moderate, make it less palatable to a majority. They somehow think that their purity of thought/purity of essence will make voters change their minds and agree with the wingnuts. Even though history keeps showing us that moderate/centrist voters don't vote the way the wingnuts (right or left) think. It's never about the 30-33 percent Right/Republican or the 30-33 percent Left/Democrat, it's the 30-33 percent Moderate/Indy that matters most... and the wingnuts never can see that. Those percentages, by the by, are how traditionally Gallup and other pollsters broke down the electorate voting habits. Would it hurt the Republican Party to mention that currently the polling numbers show 21 percent identifying as Republican (with 38 percent Indy and 35 percent Dem)? Hmm 21 + 38 + 35 = 94 so there's 6 percent leeway, but still. Should it shock anyone that it's the most skewed I've ever seen the voting divisions (I did research on voting trends from the 50s on up back at UF in 2004: the voting trends were usually hovering around 30 percent for all three groupings every decade)? Actually it ought to hurt the Republicans a lot: but as always the wingnuts don't care.

I do wonder just how MANY seats in Congress the Republicans have to lose before whatever's left of their leadership sits up and says "Hey guys, remember when there were enough of us to fill a Denny's banquet room? Think we oughta start appealing to more voters instead of fewer voters next term?"

UPDATE: not more than 10 seconds after I post this, I find on Moderate Voice a wonderful essay by Elrod that explains more eloquently the problems facing the GOP being taken over by the Club for Greed wingnuts.