The decision of Pennsylvania’s Republican senator, Arlen Specter, to jump ship and swim to the Democrats is being cheered in the GOP’s dominant conservative circles as a welcome, further ideological purification. One by one, the party is being purged of its bothersome moderates.
Even granting the obvious — that Specter’s act was a desperation move to save his political skin — the reason for that desperation is hardly something for the party to celebrate, or so you would think.
...With Specter outta here, Republicans have just about blown the Northeast, once a strength. They are weakening in the mountain West and Midwest. The party’s arch-conservatives may be thrilled by the defection of moderates — voters and candidates alike — but others have a hard time seeing happy days ahead for the GOP as it drifts toward becoming a regionally based party of the neo-Confederate South.
Cartoon: The legacy of two presidents
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