… and that disorder is that he wants to remain in the Senate, where he has served for twenty-nine years, at the age of 79. I don’t care about his party or his ideology (zzzzz…), whatever it is. I care about his narcissistic inability to move on. Enough already!
Specter’s self-indulgent and obviously self-interested change of parties is yet another argument for term limits.
What this country needs now is a shake up in leadership – not more of the same old same old – no matter their party. Having a Congress filled with people who spend a third of their lives (or more) on Capital Hill is a surefire prescription for lack of any connection to the people they are serving, not to mention any imagination or originality.
“I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,”
That philosophy being that he didn’t want to lose the next Republican primary. Your comments are right on.
“What this country needs now is a shake up in leadership”
I agree. I don’t care what party a person is a member of, we need to get this people out of office. If you are a Democrat, fine, there is a primary system, use it! Vote them out of office. It is time for REAL change.
I am a conservative and I believe that incumbency is a problem, but I am adamantly against term limits. It’s a denial of the right to vote for whoever you wish. Yes I understand the advantages of incumbency, but if you inform yourself(which is easy and inexpensive) then no amount of money can make you vote other than how you wish.
Absolutely, Roger! This has nothing to to with how “conservative” the Republicans are. Just last month he said it would be a danger to the country for the Democrats to have a veto proof majority. Olympia Snowe has an OpEd in the NYT today in which she bemoans Specter being chased out of the party by people too narrow. In advocating for a “big tent” party she quotes Ronald Reagan, including his contention that one of the core values that shouldn’t be compromised is fiscal responsibility. Yet Snowe joined Specter in voting for the Porkulus! These people are not only not in touch with the rest of the country, they aren’t even in touch with their own words!
When I saw the headline that Arlen Specter had switched parties, my first thought was that he had finally become a Republican.
I am sorry James, but I couldn’t disagree with you more. What we need is term limits. We have it for the Presidency and we need it for Congress. There is no reason that anyone, Democrat or Republican, should be in office for 29 years. Nobody is indispensable. When someone starts believing that he has a God-given right to rule over us forever, all you get is corruption or worse. One of the most significant things Washington did was to turn down a third term in office. That saved this country from ever having to deal with a “President for Life” (until of course FDR decided that he was indispensable).
There is less turnover in Congress than in the old Soviet Presidium.
“What we need is term limits.”
We do not need formal term limits. Such an absolute can be prove very harmful during a crisis. Nonetheless, we do need an informal understanding among the citizenry to replace their politicians after a number of years.
Given that I have been represented by Ted Kennedy for most of my adult life, I think term limits are necessary. Four terms for a Senator would almost be a quarter of a century; anything longer is ridiculous. A few Senators like Byrd, Kennedy and Specter need to be wheeled into the Senate.
I haven’t seen anyone compare this to Joe Lieberman’s change of party. Wasn’t he in essentially the same boat where another Democrat challenged him in his primary, so he switched parties to run, but rather than abandon his party and his liberal principals altogether (except for national security), he chose to run as an independent and caucus with the Democrats. Spector’s defection showed he had no true conservative principals to begin with and really wasn’t concerned with the importance of a two party system as he had previously claimed.
In principle, term limits shouldn’t be necessary, either for Congress or the president. But in practice, they are a good idea. After someone is in office too long, they have sufficient resources and connections to begin to game the system. And there’s no direct check and balance on that. It’s hard for the average voter to even find out about the behind-the-scenes shenanigans, let alone put it all together in time for an election. It’s a little bit of a blunt intsrument, but term limits can provide the check.
My observation (and Specter bears this out) is that the longer a person is in office the more it becomes about them staying in office. When a politician is new and idealistic he comes in with a certain set of goals and a staff that is focused on those goals. But as time goes on and those staffers leave (for a variety of reasons) they are replaced by people who gravitate more toward power for its own sake, and the initial ideological goals that brought the person into office become secondary. At the end you have a person seduced by power and acclimated to being wined and dined surrounded by yes men trying to preserve that power. And that doesn’t bode well for the public the person ostensibly represents.
To see the ultimate expression of this phenomenon you can look at Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and people of his ilk. No person should be president of a country for 30 years because it just breeds trouble. They accumulate too much power, can pull too many strings, are surrounded by too many sycophants, etc. and warp the political system in the process. They become more important than the issues. What’s happening in the Congress doesn’t go to that degree, but it’s on the same continuum and has the same downsides.
Specter didn’t even pretend he switched to the Democrats because “he could serve the people better” or some such twaddle. He came right out and said he couldn’t get elected as a Republican and therefore he was going to run as a Democrat. If there were term limits, he could have saved himself the hubris and the embarrassment.
Right on. And how about a dramatic INCREASE in compensation with an agreement not to lobby afterwards so they don’t have to peddle themselves to special interest for pennies on the dollar?
This is a wish to remain in power – pure and simple. It represents the change from being, “a servant of the People” to ” The People are my servants”.
Like his “magic bullet”, he zigs and zags, thinking he can come out pristine.
What a great take on this – succinct and to the point.
That Specter is willing to sell his party down the river (a party where Bush and co. visited Pennsylvania just a few years ago to help him beat another (true) republican) at his ripe old age tells you EVERYTHING you need to know about the man. Obama’s comment that it took “courage” was 100% wrong. It took sheer spinelessness.
Not to mention absolute corruption!
Didn’t Congress vote to enact Term Limits in the mid-90s as part of Newt’s Contract with America, only to have the Supreme Court declare it unconstitutional?
Not only do I think we need term limits, but I think the current Congress is so corrupt and/or out of touch, that the entire House and Senate needs to be cleaned out. I know there are a few good conservative Congressmen and (even fewer) Senators, but it would be worth losing them to get new blood in.
Yes, I know this is wishful thinking and it will never happen. POR will be successful in their bid to ruin this country.
The personality disorder is placing his ambition well ahead of the good of the country. This is called selfishness, and it is a species, lesser or greater, of what is called Evil.
As to term limits … what scares me about draconian term limits is that the professional bureaucrats have no term limits and already have more power than the president. I think that Congresscritters ought to be allowed to serve for twelve years (maybe ten for the House) and perhaps longer IF THEY ARE WILLING TO SACRIFICE THEIR SENIORITY. But I don’t think that they ought to be able to continue indefinitely, so I would argue for a restriction on consecutive terms, requiring that they spend almost as much time out of office as in it. Give them one free term (two in the House) … then they have two (three) terms in, and from then on they must spend one term out for every one they want to be in, with no more than two (three) consecutive. Re-elected non-consecutively, they go in with at most two terms of seniority, and at most the number of terms they have served minus two.
This requires changing the part of the Constitution that say that Congress shall make its own rules of procedure.
Specter left because of the personality disorder of the GOP. Get it fixed people.
Spector was always a Party Of Spector, not a GOP vote, so his switch is only on some bills; he was a Democratic vote for the most part anyway. He will probably face opposition from the left in the Demo primary anyway. You can expect a slambang negative and dirty tricks campaign, which, in PA, I doubt the GOP can match. As an example, I doubt congressman Sestack will give up the Dem nomination gently, and the admiral has far less baggage.
I hope someone creates an ad or a skit with Specter as Gollum.Using his statements complaining about not enough debate on the stimulus plan after he cast the deciding vote shutting down debate.His statement that he would not switch parties. All to keep his precious.
We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. They trys to steal it from us. Sneaky little republicans. Wicked, tricksy, false!
Specter wants to make sure he only leaves the U.S. Senate inside a coffin. Not different from Robert Byrd, the Senator from KKK…
Isn’t that curious that we can no longer identify Senators by state, but by preferred constituency? There’s the Senator from Countrywide and the Irish Cottage (Dodd), the (former) Senator from MBNA (Biden the Clown), the Senator from Amnesty (McCain), the Senator from the Faustian Bargain (Schummer), the Senator from Juicy Government Favors for My Husband (Feinstein), the former Senator from Carpetbag Nation (Clinton), etc… And then there’s the upcoming Senator from Saturday Night Live! (Franken)…
No wonder we feel like we have no representation!
And of course, I forgot! There was also the former Senator from ACORN and Alinsky (Our current President)…
For some reason, this is the best argument for term limits that I have ever heard. Keep phrasing it in terms of people who spend their entire lives in the capitol building; I think that has alot of play with the public.
As far as Arlen Specter is concerned, it’s not about driving “moderates” from the Republican Party, it’s about the secret plan to send all imbeciles to the Democratic Party.
The downside of this plan is that the number of imbeciles was underestimated .. speaks volumes about the state of education.
Meanwhile, Arlen Specter has shown that his “imbecile” status is well deserved.
The upside for Republicans, given Specter’s treatment by the Democrats, is that it is now unlikely that any of the other “moderate” Republicans will bolt to the Democratic Party.
For this I give a big “thumbs up” to the Democrats. Good Job.