Happy Hour Thread: Biden Had Fourteen Conversations With Specter This Year
* Looks like the White House involvement in Arlen Specter’s decision to switch parties was much deeper than we thought: A White House aide confirms to me that Joe Biden had a total of six in-person meetings and at least eight phone calls with Specter since the stimulus package passed early this year.
Keep in mind that Specter supported the stimulus package, while almost all the GOP opposed it. So this, clearly, was the starting point for the White House’s extensive wooing of Specter.
It had already been reported that Biden was involved in Specter’s switch, but the specific number of conversations illustrates much more White House involvement than was first evident. The White House aide declined to characterize the conversations.
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* Andrew Sullivan marvels at the fact that Specter’s support for Obama’s stimulus spending amid the economic crisis was the GOP’s breaking point, pushing Specter out.
* TPM catches Senator John Cornyn vowing that the GOP “will be able to regain its status as a national party.” Unless I’m missing something, that’s a pretty clear admission that the GOP is no longer a national party. Watch the vid here.
* Ben Smith points out that RNC chair Michael Steele is using Specter’s defection to rally the GOP base behind … himself. Steele has been hunting for a lot of silver linings lately…
* Hillary helped persuade Specter to switch, Ryan Grim argues, provocatively.
* Markos Moulitsas says that Specter will have to cave and support the Employee Free Choice Act in order to avoid a Dem primary.
* Bill Kristol claims that the torture memos minimized torture.
* Here’s today’s installment in the Michele Bachmann chronicles.
* And here’s a bonus installment, because it’s happy hour.
Update: Edited slightly for accuracy.
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He’s absolutely right. Minimization, denial, and blame are among the main tools used by batterers to evade responsibility.
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Enhanced interrogation techniques is a minimization of torture. No big deal, right?
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jzap — agreed, it’s pretty creative stuff. not a lot of places for those folks to go right now.
Oh, one more thing…
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Specter’s call-out of the GOP’s self-imposed requirement of ultra orthodoxy really underscores them as the RepubliFringe Party.
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Their insistence on purity is reminiscent of their K-Street Project, where they tried imposing their take-no-prisoners strategy on lobbyists. That succeeded for a while, but it didn’t work out very well in the long run.
From my reading of the progressive blogosphere, some say in one sentence the Republicans are a small tent party. In the next, he wishes Democrats would reject a moderate like Specter to enforce his small tent wishes. A lot of the left-wing blogosphere is as dogmatic as the right-wingers in this respect. Of course, they will say that they are right and their ideas are the only good thing for America, but the right says the same thing. Only a few years ago, people were talking about a permanent Republican majority. Now that the Dems are in ascendence, some people chose to beleive that the tables can never turn.
I like the fact that our Party is open to people with a wide spectrum of beliefs. It is definitely much better for the Democrat’s electoral prospects. Of course, if the blogosphere had their way, Edwards or Kucinich would have been nominated and we would be talking about VP Sarah Palin’s first 100 days.
Kristol: “Excesses by interrogators would probably have been more likely, not less, if the memos had not been written.”
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And it’s why we are thankful for them and the mercy which fell out from their composition and distribution. We reflect back on those earlier periods of time, after Pearl Harbor for example, when, without those memos, America was just torturing up a storm.
I thought you folks might be interested in RedState’s “quote of the day”:
“Most of the legislature is elected by a collection of enviro-twits, trust-funders, crybabies, welfare garbage and nudists.”
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I sure wish our side had this level of wit and deft facility with language.
Obama’s pick of Joe Biden as veep is looking pretty darn smart right now.
just a small quibble: I think Sullivan is marveling that Specter’s support of the stimulus was the GOP’s breaking point, not that the GOP’s rejection of the stimulus is Specter’s breaking point. I think Sullivan’s line about GOP’s principle being partisanship and the primary challenge that was awaiting Specter support that reading.
penpen
I think so. Sullivan includes and echoes Specter’s notion that the apparent highest goal/principle for the GOP is partisan loyalty, rather than a notion of loyalty to a constituency of citizens.
yep, you guys are right re Sullivan. fixed it, thx.
If kristol is correct that the torture memos kept things from being worse, what were they like before?
CourtneyH–you sum up what I’ve been thinking ( “A lot of the left-wing blogosphere is as dogmatic as the right-wingers…”) It IS a big deal that Specter has come over and its a very good deal for Obama’s agenda. It’s also very unusual–according to the official Senate history site senators changing parties has only happened 21 times in all of US history. What a great day!
be quiet everybody. you need to stop pointing out that the GOP is destroying itself. let them die peacefully behind the poor leadership and lack of ideas they have had for the last 20 years.
dont give them any funny ‘ideas’ they are allergic to new ones.
i also love how they worship reagan. reagan was a lying POS and his legacy is one of lies and the breaking of the american people. let that alone kill them.
Here is that official Senate history site I mentioned above
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/senators_changed_parties.htm
A correction–ooks like it is since 1890, not since “all of US history”
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