Arlen Specter was a RINO. He is a RINO no more as he joins the Democrat Party. What does this mean? Well it is a clear example of what is wrong with the Republican Party today. The party is getting smaller and is losing influence. How long will we try to elect southern conservatives in states where they simply can’t win? Pat Toomey can not win in Pennsylvania. The only way Pat Toomey could win is if he were to go up against a far left candidate.
I am all for getting conservative in the Congress. Let’s just not be dumb about it. Let us have the leaders come from places where they will win. There will be windows when we can run more conservative candidates, such as when we ran Rick Santorum in 1994 vs Harris Wofford. Still, it makes zero sense to knock out a moderate (or if you believe it, a liberal) Republican out of the party.
And that is exactly what we did. We pushed him out. Sure, Specter decided to leave on his own accord, but we were doing him no favors. The national party was not behind him. All the pressure was on Toomey to run, not on Toomey not to run. While Specter is not ideal, he is much better than the alternative.
I don’t know how long it is going to take the Republican Party to wise up and see that if we need to attract people from the far right all the way to the center left. I hope this is a bottom, but I don’t think it is yet.
