Democrat Senator Arlen Specter

Republicans Come to Deserving End

WASHINGTON (By John F. Harris and Jim Vandehei, Politico) April 29, 2009  — Arlen Specter’s break from Republicans is the latest in a trip-hammer series of reversals that leaves the Republicans more beaten and less popular than either major party has been in decades.

Amid gloating among Democrats and recriminations among Republicans, the Specter divorce is both symptom and cause of the Republicans collapse — leaving the opposition party on the brink of irrelevance in Barack Obama’s Washington and facing few obvious paths back to power.

The Pennsylvania Republican’s about-face, combined with the all-but-certain ascension of Minnesota Democrat Al Franken to the Senate, should soon leave Democrats with a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority.

The last time either party had such a wide Senate margin was during the first two years of Jimmy Carter’s term in 1977-1978, when Democrats under then-Majority Leader Robert Byrd held 61 seats.

But Specter’s abandonment didn’t happen in isolation. No matter whether his move was motivated by principle, fear, or opportunism — or some combination of the three — it comes in the same month as a traditionally Republicans-leaning district in upstate New York tipped for the Democrats. In the nine states of the Northeast, including Pennsylvania, there are only 15 Republicans House members out of 83 seats, and now just three Republicans out of 18 senators.

Nationally, Republicans are at or near record levels for unpopularity. In January, Gallup showed Democrats with their greatest advantage in party identification since the organization began polling the question. Democrats have an eight-point advantage, 36 percent to 28 percent. That 28 percent tied the figure for the lowest Republican support ever recorded by Gallup.

The most recent precedent for Tuesday’s news was when another Northeasterner, then Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont, left Republicans to become an independent and switched control of the chamber to Democrats.

But this is far worse for Republicans. In 2001, Republicans still had the House and the White House. Now they have neither. Instead, they have a Republican National Committee chairman who is drawing weak reviews for gaffes, they have House and Senate leaders — Rep. John Boehner of Ohio and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — who are more tacticians than public messengers. And there is little prospect of a national Republicans spokesman emerging for another three years, until the 2012 election.

While many Republicans were jeering Specter as he headed for the exits, few were denying the move was a setback, both in public perceptions and legislative arithmetic.

“It’s a huge blow to the Republicans’ ability to moderate any of Obama’s very liberal positions,” said former Sen. Rick Santorum, who once served with Specter as a Republicans senator from Pennsylvania.

Tim Griffin, a former top strategist to the Bush-Cheney campaigns, echoed the widely held view of Specter among conservatives: “While I am disappointed to lose a Republican senator, he has long acted like a Democrat and belonged with them. He is finally going home.”

But other Republicans said conservatives have left the Republican party with an exclusionary message. On the national level, said Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), “you certainly haven’t heard warm encouraging words of how they view moderates. Either you are with us or against us.”

What’s notable about the Republican collapse is not simply its depth but its velocity. It was just a few years ago, in the wake of George W. Bush’s reelection, that books were being written on whether Republicans had acquired a virtually unbreakable hold on the levers of political power. After 2004, Republicans held a ten-vote advantage in the Senate.

The last time a political party suffered such grievous losses in the Senate during a compressed period was from 1976-1980, when the Democrats went from a post-Watergate high of 61 seats after Carter’s first election, to 45 seats as Ronald Reagan came in. The numbers are almost perfectly reversed: in the last four years, the Democrats have gone from a 45-55 deficit in the Senate after Bush’s reelection to 60 seats (or 59 with an asterisk) today.

In the category of silver linings, the fluidity of these numbers illustrates that politics can change quickly. Republicans hope Obama, who is sharpening the lines of debate with big plans on spending, energy, and health care, might himself be an engine of Republicans revival.