Specter the Weather Vane

Arlen Spector's decision to leave the Republican party and join the Democrats means most, I think, in the context of US voting trends overall.

When he noted that he couldn't hope to win in a PA Republican primary, Spector merely confirmed what we all know. The Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the far Far Right. In PA as in all other states except TX, UT and a handful of Dixieloons, the GOP has now completely alienated its moderates.

However, in so doing, it has also completely alienated the American voting majority.

Another way to look at it is that Specter (who, if moderate is emphatically a mercurial, not to say loose-cannon moderate -- I'm not over his role in the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas matter, thankyouverymuch) cannot win either

within

the Republican Party or, if he runs as a Republican, a popular election, either.

Yes, it's important how Democratic Senator Arlen Specter voters on big issues yet to be decided, such as health care and the right to organize. But in two years, this is not going to be such a big deal.

Eighteen Republicans are up for re-election in 2010. And I'm thinking that, barring a catastrophe at home or a disastrous economy error by the Obama administration, the country is of a strong mind to keep Democrats in power for the foreseeable. As more and more youth come of age, and as more and more of us age and notice our dependence on a national healthcare program, and as more and more minority voters enter the picture, the country in fact is likely to increase the Democrats' majority in both houses if the GOP keeps on keeping on the way it has been keeping on.

Let's hope it does. Ladies and gem'men, encourage Governor Good Hair (Perry of TX) and the idiots at Fox News. We've got 'em by the short and curlies.

The Larry Schiavo Case, Continued

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive! (Sir Walter Scott, Marmion)


As I was saying. . .

Thanks to trainmaster Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) and subtle signals from CNN, the public’s attention is moving away from Craig qua criminal sex perv (and I don't mean the gay part) to Craig qua victim of his own party’s twisted leadership.

Just last week, Craig was the perp: a sleazy, hypocritical, and media-challenged sex perv. Now he is morphing into twice a victim -- of what is being pushed now as a purported “sex sting” (see CNN’s crawl line) and of a meanly, even rabidly homophobic Republican leadership.

If this isn’t a case of the hoisting petard, I don’t know what is.

Specter’s role -- suggesting that Craig is being "railroaded"and urging him to fight back -- in a way reprises his performance in 1991 in the infamous Clarence Thomas nomination hearings. Although Specter hasn’t yet begun to fight, and the direction of his attack is reversed now (Specter has his own party’s leadership in his sights), it’s clear that Specter still knows how to make a train wreck.

What’s baffling is that neither Specter nor Craig seems to care much about the impact of the Craig case on the Republican party. Well, in Craig’s case, not so baffling. But in Specter’s, what’s the deal? Circle the wagons and fire?

This belated attempt at resurrection will do more than keep Craig’s sleazy behavior qua Republican on our minds. It will also help us again to see the Republican leadership for what it truly is: a waspish hive of inquisitors that’s just oh-so willing to pimp anybody and anything for its own political self-interest. It's about everybody's morals but their own.

This, after all, is the same crowd (absent Dr. Frist, The Long-Distance Diagnoser) that gave itself the vapors and Congress a huge black eye over the Terry Schiavo tragedy.

In the end, ironically, Craig will still have done whatever it was that he did in the airport toilet (me, I'm going with the cop on this one). Soon, either he’ll be the born-again sitting senator from Idaho or he'll be the former senator from Idaho, but he’ll always be the hypocritical, cowardly, and homophobic Republican senator from Idaho with at least one big, fat, sleazzzy sex stain on his record.

And in the end, the GOP will be what it has been for twenty years or more: a mean, manipulative, hypocritical, narrow-minded, misguided, greedy, corrupt, posturing, wasteful, expensive, lying, and very dangerous mess. Other than that, hey, what more could you want?

This Specter-initiated Craig flip-flop isn’t going to fool, or change the fundamentals for anybody.

The Larry Schiavo Case

AKA Larry Craig.

If you read this blog, you know I’m not crazy about Senator Larry Craig. He's coming across to me as a selfish liar who has deceived his family, his lovers, his friends, his constituents, and of course himself.

It seems that he has so compartmentalized his sexuality from his consciousness and conscience that he actually may not believe he’s done anything wrong, except pleading guilty. As the awful tape-recording reveals, in Craig's head, if anybody was giving hand signals, it wasn’t Mr. Wide Stance. No nasty boys here.

Now comes news that the psychodrama has only just begun. Larry Craig may not resign after all. Big surprise. I heard the words “intend to” on Saturday, and knew then that he had given himself an out. It was clear then that the story wasn’t done yet.

This decision shifts the country’s focus from Craig to the Republican leadership. None of this could occur were it not for (a) Craig's truly unnerving capacity to split off his attraction to men, and (b) trainmaster Arlen Specter. More shortly.