The GOP Jihad

Arlen Specter didn't jump ship. He was forced to walk the plank.

On Tax Day, in a move timed to coincide with the nationwide tea-bag protests, outgoing Club for Growth president Pat Toomey announced that he would mount a primary challenge to Specter, a Senate veteran from Pennsylvania best known for securing Clarence Thomas' confirmation to the Supreme Court. His goal wasn't to take Specter's seat for himself; according to top GOP observers, the far-right Toomey had no real chance of winning in a state that saw 200,000 Republicans register as Democrats in the last election. The true objective was to knock Specter — an old-school centrist whom Toomey's rabidly small-government Club had named its "Comrade of the Month" for his vote backing the president's stimulus plan — out of the Republican Party.

The plan worked — though not as expected. On April 29th, Specter sidestepped Toomey's challenge by defecting to the Democratic Party, a move that could give the president a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Explaining the breakup, Specter denounced the end of the "Reagan Big Tent" that had ushered him into office in 1980. Given the GOP's far-right radicalization, he said, he could no longer cater to the embittered dregs of the party he had served for decades: "I was unwilling to subject my 29-year record in the Senate to the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate." In other words, he told Republicans, it's not me — it's you.