Republicans' Slide into Right-Wing Nuttery

The already bruising fight over the Republican primary in Pennsylvania for Arlen Specter's Senate seat, in May 2010, shows the extent to which the Republican Party has become a composite of sexually frustrated Sarah Palin fans, gun-toting, tax hating militiamen, and overtly racist fanatics who are enraged that the country has dared to elect its first black President. Arlen Specter is one of the last remaining sane voices of the Republicans in the Senate: he supports abortion rights, he was staunchly opposed to unwarranted NSA surveillance of American citizens, he blocked the right-wing nutjob Robert H. Bork from becoming a Supreme Court justice, and finally and most importantly, he voted for the stimulus package. Because of his vote (although he and his other moderate Republican colleagues had destructively watered down the stimulus) hundreds of thousands of police officers, firemen, teachers, professors, teaching assistants, etc, are not being laid off. Our own university's budget is actually being increased 1% this year, for the first time in 5 years! And Specter is to be commended for his opposition to his party's slide into the right-wing wilderness. According to the Congressional Quarterly, he has broken with his party 43% of the time.

It is because of his moderation that he will almost certainly (although it might still be too early to tell) lose his seat to his Republican challenger, an authentic Republican with right-wing nutjub credentials, Pat Toomey who lost to Specter by 2% in the last Republican primary. But after his vote for the stimulus, Specter has seen his popularity among his Republican voters plunge (his Republican challenger is up almost 14 points in the latest poll!). The irony of it all is that Specter's loss in the primary to Toomey would be wonderful news for the Democrats who would then almost certainly win that seat in November 2010 since Pennsylvania's demographics and voting pattern has shifted to the left, mimicking the country-wide trend (with the exception of the South). This has left Republicans like Specter vulnerable to right-wing vultures who love to campaign on socially divisive issues.

Specter's ostracism from his party shows the extent to which the Republican party has fatalistically accepted being the party of the right-wing, content with talking to itself rather than to the larger American electorate. This would be all good news to me, who as you probably know thinks that the Republican Party has pretty much destroyed this country during their 8-year rule, but I do think our country needs healthy, vibrant, and constructive opposition. Without an intellectually vibrant Republican Party, the Democrats may lose their way pretty soon. And that's the bad news....