The spectre of change

Call me confused. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch "Dr. No" McConnell was alarming the base by telling them that Arlen Specter's defection was "a threat to the country," the RNC was sending out a fund-raising letter declaring "Good riddance." Only thing I can think of is that they think Pat "I'm bitter and I cling to my guns and religion" Toomey actually has a chance to win a general election in Pennsylvania.

Specter said that he jumped ship because of the hard right turn the Republicans have made recently -- and that is, technically, the reason -- but we all know, of course, that he made the switch to the president's party because that hard right turn means there's no way in hell he'll get the Republican nomination in 2010. And now that Harry "Don't rock the boat" Reid has declared the Democrats won't field a challenger to Mr. Specter in their primary, he's a shoo-in to return to the Senate.

This despite Specter opposition to quite a few actual Democrat policies and ideals. I don't know about you, but I'm betting Pennsylvanians, who already have pro-life Bob Casey in the Senate, might be interested in a real Democrat about now. And Joe Torsella, who had been the frontrunner for the Dem nomination, said he wasn't about to step aside.

And then there's Maine. What's gonna happen to the girls from the Pine Tree State? Sue Collins sounded pretty adamant about sticking with the GOP, but Olympia Snowe -- actually, I expected her to jump first. Snowe said that she has been asked to switch sides "but not recently" and noted that the party apparently didn't learn jack when Jim Jeffords famously switched from Republican to Independent, caucusing with the Dems, a few years ago.

For me personally and then for the party, it's devastating. I've always been concerned about the Republican party nationally, about their exclusionary policies towards moderate Republicans. That's not a secretly held view on my part.

We are heading to having the smallest political tent in history for any political party the way things are unfolding.

So maybe it's still possible she'll give up hoping that the GOP will realized it's proverbially shooting itself in its proverbial foot by pandering to the most backward troglodytes on the planet, and that's probably insulting to actual troglodytes.

But alas, not all of the right sees things the way Senator Snowe does. How 'bout that Sean "I know I said I'd be waterboarded for charity but if I don't mention it again y'all will forget" Hannity, "I think if anything, the Republican Party is moved to the left in recent years."

Just in case y'all thought that Republican Bizarro World wasn't still in full effect.

Then there was Jim "I don't need a stupid quote for my middle name" Deminted of South Carolina, who makes fellow South Carolinian Lindsay Graham look gay ... oh, never mind. But anyway, Jim Deminted said that "I feel that Republicans are starting to get the message of the last two elections -- that the American people don't want a lukewarm agenda. They don't want a liberal light agenda"

That's right, Jim. They want a solidly liberal agenda. Remember November when y'all painted Barack Obama as more liberal than Russ Feingold and Paul Wellstone put together? Yeah. That guy won.

And the party's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Limbaugh, is calling for John McCain to follow Specter overboard. Like that's gonna happen. And Michael Steele, the bizarro world head of the Republican Party, continued to sound like a throwback to some bad 70s cop show.

If Sen. Specter survives in the fall — get ready to go to the mat, baby, because we're coming after you and taking you out,

he said. Actually. Steele really had quite a day yesterday. Asked about the GOP's removal of $870 million for pandemic preparedness from the stimulus bill earlier this year (led by Maine's Collins, by the way) on CNN, Steele shot back "Did we know this was gonna happen?"

Well, um, no, Michael, but then, that's what preparedness is about. The rest of his comment, in which it appears that he links pandemic preparedness a part of the stimulus bill that was meant to figure out what to do with the incredible stench of hog farms in Iowa, is maybe even more bizarre.

When this package of spending was presented to the Congress and the American people, what was the presentation that was given by this administration? This was to create jobs. This was to restore our economy. It had nothing to do with why pigs stink. It had nothing to do with any of the stuff we spent money on,

he said, thus proving once again that Steele and the rest of the Republicans really have no idea what a stimulus is let alone what it's supposed to do. Not to be outdone, Chuck Shumer, the senior Democratic senator from New York, also inexplicably lumped pandemic preparedness in the stimulus bill with "all those little porky things" he said had been added to the bill by the House of Representatives, thus proving that stupidity knows no party lines.


And speaking of stupidity, get this. A team at Ohio State University conducted an experiment using The Colbert Report to see how satire is viewed along ideological lines. Oddly enough, both liberals and conservatives found Stephen Colbert to be equally funny, but conservatives, oddly enough, tended to think he actually believes the things he says, that he is only pretending to be joking and that he actually dislikes liberals.

The liberals got the joke. And guess who the joke's on?


News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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