Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic asks for an explanation:

The GOP has basically been eliminated from the Northeast by the purists so there aren’t many great examples.

Contrast that with how Democrats treat people like Mark Prior, Jon Tester, and Ben Nelson.  These Senators aren’t anywhere near ideal for Democrats, as a quick glance at the Netroots sites will affirm.

But they don’t have to fear primaries by party mutilators like Pat Toomey.

Why do Dems treat their Dogs differently

Is it a function of power? Or party traditions?

The difference, such that there is, is explained by the different manner in which Republicans and Democrats secure votes.  Democrats do not have a cohesive ideology; rather, they are a party existing purely to win power.  They do so by launching money at key interest groups and voting blocs.  Essentially, they bribe enough constituencies to vote for them until they have a majority.  This tactic requires little ideological conformity from party members, beyond a simple willingness to go along to get along.

Republicans win by representing an ideology.  Specifically, one of small government and fiscal restraint.  They lose when they do not represent this ideology or try to be like Democrats.  When they hurl money at constituency groups, they bleed ideological support while gaining little new adherents.  Those receiving this largesse are thankful, no doubt, but they know they could always get even more if Democrats were in power.

Because the Republican party has to sell itself ideologically, it must, on the whole, convincingly represent that ideology. Party members such as Lincoln Chafee, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins consistently undermine that image. This costs the party more seats than they provide.  Cutting out enough of these miscreants, such that the party can once again be seen as representative of the small government ideology, is necessary to its regaining majority status.

But so long as the media trots out only liberals, who treat the parties as two sides of the same coin, to explain the significance of events within the Republican party, they will reach conclusions that are 180 degrees off.  But that’s fine by me, as it means the liberals will, once again, be taken completely by surprise when they are booted out of office.

Comments  Print This Post

---

I heard this morning that Arlen Specter was changing parties.  Upon investigation I was sad and dismayed to learn he’s still a democrat:

Veteran Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania disclosed plans Tuesday to switch parties, a move intended to boost his chances of winning re-election next year that also will push Democrats within one seat of a 60-vote filibuster-resistant majority.

“I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,” Specter said in a statement posted on a Web site devoted to Pennsylvania politics and confirmed by his office. Several Senate officials said a formal announcement was expected later in the day or Wednesday.

…Specter faced an extraordinarily difficult re-election challenge in his home state in 2010, having first to confront a challenge from his right in the Republican primary before pivoting to a general election campaign against a Democrat in a state that has trended increasingly Democratic in recent elections.

What’s amazing here is that he would just come out and admit that this is nothing more than naked opportunism.  He was getting crushed in the early polls by Club for Growth President Pat Toomey, who narrowly lost the last primary battle, and that was before Specter sealed his unprincipled betrayal by supporting the porkulus bill.

Practically this makes little difference.  The talk will be about how this gives democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority (counting the soon-to-be Senator Smalley), but that just obscures the fact there was already a 60+ seat liberal majority, thanks to the likes of Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.

The upside is that now even the morons at the RNC will be able to figure out to stop supporting Arlen Specter at the expense of principled conservatives.

Comments  Print This Post

---

Left-wing advocates of granting Washington DC a seat in Congress were heartened by the election of president Obama, a strong supporter of such a move.  The problem?  It’s blatantly unconstitutional.

Article 1, Section 2 says, “The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states.”  It further states, “No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.”

There is no ambiguity here.  States are represented in the House.  The District of Columbia is not a state.  It cannot be represented in the House.  Moreover, no individual meets the qualifications above to represent D.C., as one cannot reside in the state in which one is chosen if one is not chosen by a state.

But this isn’t stopping Attorney General Eric Holder.  When his lawyers at the Justice Department concluded proposed legislation to grant a House seat to D.C. would be unconstitutional, Holder basically told them to shove of.  Rather, he took the time honored, corrupt politician approach of asking the same question of different people until he got the answer he wanted.  This is disgraceful.

But the disgrace does not all belong to the democrats.  Some RINO’s and misguided republicans are on the wrong side of this issue. The support of Republican Senator Orrin Hatch has been essentially bought with the inclusion of an extra seat for Utah.  He and many others from the state felt that Utah should have received an additional seat in the last census, so they are willing to support a blatantly unconstitutional measure in exchange for this redress.  But any seat would only last 2 years until the next census and apportionment, where Utah would likely have gained the seat anyway.

Others, such as Susan Collins, support the measure despite her own misgivings over its constitutionality.  Her reasoning for supporting it?  “I believed then, as I do now, that this question is best resolved by the courts and not by this committee.” This attitude reflects a gross negligence of her duties, as she is as equally bound to uphold the Constitution as the courts. That was the view of James Madison when he addressed the first Congress.  He said, “[I]t is incontrovertibly of as much importance to this branch of the Government as to any other, that the Constitution should be preserved entire.”

Whether it be Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Orrin Hatch or Susan Collins, all members of our government have an equal duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Passing blatantly unconstitutional laws, with the attitude of “let the courts sort it out,” is a repugnant adbication of that responsibility.

Comments  Print This Post

---

Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.