Matt Yglesias

Arlen Specter’s Ideological Meandering

Dave Weigel takes an informative look inside Arlen Specter’s pre-primary efforts to remake himself into a more conservative figure, the better to fend off a strong challenge from former Congressman Pat Toomey. The basic gist of Specter, as I understand it, is that Pennsylvania conservative see him as fundamentally a liberal squish who dashes right whenever he’s facing a challenge from the right. Pennsylvania progressives, meanwhile, see him as fundamentally a conservative who dashes left whenever he’s facing a challenge from the left. Everyone hates him, in other words, except the voters of Pennsylvania who seem to like him just fine.

The fundamental situation looks quite good for Toomey to me. He almost beat Specter in 2004 at a time when a very popular conservative incumbent president was strongly backing the more moderate choice. Without those kinds of friends in high places to back him up, Specter should be in big trouble. The question then becomes whether or not a top-tier Democrat will emerge to run against Toomey. There’s no real evidence that an orthodox conservative can win in Pennsylvania anymore than an orthodox conservative could win in Maryland or Delaware or New Jersey. But Specter is hugely popular so PA Democrats haven’t been clamoring to get into a hard-to-win race against him. Toomey, by contrast, would be very beatable if a solid candidate emerged.

Toomey’s In

Pat Toomey, the wingnut congressman who challenged Arlen Specter in a 2004 primary before becoming the head of the super-insane Club for Growth, is officially throwing his hat in the ring for a second challenge. This is very bad news for anyone hoping to see the Employee Free Choice Act passed in this congress. Specter voted for cloture on EFCA in the previous congress, which should be understood in part as payback for receiving labor support in his 2004 general election. But a vote for EFCA could be an enormous liability in a GOP primary race. Ordinarily, most establishment types in the GOP/business nexus would back an incumbent against a challenger, but your typical executive would sooner strangle his children with his bare hands than sign a collective bargaining agreement.

As I’ve said before, one possible answer would be for Specter to back Obama’s budget and EFCA and switch parties. To be a happy Democrat he would need to reposition himself ideologically somewhat, but he’s meandered quite a bit ideologically over the years. This, however, is what tends to happen with party switchers. Jim Jefford went from a voting record that would have been extremely conservative for a Democrat to being a standard-issue Vermont liberal after he switched parties. And you saw something similar with some Clinton-era D-to-R party switchers.

Specter’s Dilemma

Pat Toomey nearly beat Arlen Specter in a 2004 primary. Earlier this year, he ruled out another primary challenge to Pennsylvania’s senior senator, but more recently he’s been ruling it back in. This sets up an interesting dilemma that Dave Weigel explains:

A weekend poll showed that 66 percent of Republicans, boiling over in anti-stimulus anger, would support replacing Specter. But only 42 percent of Democrats oppose Specter. A slight plurality of Democrats want to keep him, and that’s complicating Democratic efforts to find a first-tier challenger against the senator.

In 2004, Specter benefitted from the support of unions like the AFL-CIO. If Specter votes for the Employee Free Choice Act, he knows he will probably win union support that’s crucial for the general election while firing the starting gun for conservative groups who are only really useful to him in the primary.

In the 2007-2008 congress Specter, no doubt in part as a token of appreciation for that AFL-CIO support, was the lone Republican to back EFCA. If he votes for it again this congress, it’ll be tough for him to win the primary. But if he votes against it, I think he’ll find it tough to win the general election when his support from Democratic-leaning interest groups vanishes. I doubt Specter will avail himself of this option, but the obvious solution would be to stick to his guns on EFCA and follow up his support for the stimulus by switching parties and, like Jim Jeffords, reposition ideologically somewhat. In other words, stop being a vulnerable moderate Republican and become a plain-vanilla Democrat with a safe seat. It would be pretty easy for Specter, as a Democrat, to beat GOP nominee Toomey in a general election. But beating Toomey in a primary without becoming too right-wing to carry the state will be tough.