One step closer to one-party rule: Specter becomes Dem

[The Yosemite Bear]

This whole "fascist" thing the GOP is doing is the most ridiculous PR stunt i´ve ever seen or heard of. I hope not many people are honestly falling for this bullshit.

It so much projection and double speak, i'm suprised they haven't asked for Dick Cheney to head their "Ministry of Love"....

[Superman]

It so much projection

That it is, my man. Paranoid righty types are pretty good at projecting all of their persecution crap on everyone else.

Specter has been a guest on the Howard Stern show on at least two separate occasions. I always knew he was really one of us.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

More seriously, he was asking how could Pennsylvanians could "trust" Specter.

Well, they can certainly trust Specter to kick the living shit out of Toomey in the general next year. I'd bet a thousand dollars Specter will increase his victory margin from 2004 against any Republican. Against Toomey, it'll be a fucking joke; Toomey's more conservative than Rick Santorum and Pennsylvania is bluer than it was in 2006.

I'm wondering how Specter would do in a Democratic primary, though. I was thinking a lot of Democrats would want someone other than an 80-year-old refugee from the other party running for them, especially if his voting record doesn't shift to the left following the switch.

[Ilya Muromets]

This America-hating fascist puke has been giving Republicans a bad name since he first duped stupid Penn. voters into thinking he actually had anything at all in common with Abraham Lincoln. Good riddance.

Next up, Olympia Snow and her fascist[/b cohort Susan Collins. I'd rather be on the right side of the issues than in the majority, and these frauds need to be eliminated from the party once and for all. These are the pukes than gave us John McShame as our spineless nominee.

Well, this guy sure got his copy of the latest script from GOP Propaganda HQ

They're all Big Government, control every aspect of your lives, worship communists from around the world and turn us all into atheists and Muslims. Who cares about American lives if saving them means even one terrorist is made the slightest bit uncomfortable, to hell with the US Constitution, liberal zealots. Why should that filth be dirtying the Republican Party?

Damn, he's found us out. I'll have to tell my fellow Atheist Muslim converts about this when we get out of Communist Temple later this evening.

Conservatard Adjective Checklist:

Fascist? Check.
Communists? Check.
Atheists? Check.
Muslim? Check.
Terrorist? Check.
Liberal? Check.

Yup, nearly all the standard GOP-prescribed propagandadjectives. Only things they didn't use are "abortionists" and "socialists".

[RedImperator]

More seriously, he was asking how could Pennsylvanians could "trust" Specter.

Well, they can certainly trust Specter to kick the living shit out of Toomey in the general next year. I'd bet a thousand dollars Specter will increase his victory margin from 2004 against any Republican. Against Toomey, it'll be a fucking joke; Toomey's more conservative than Rick Santorum and Pennsylvania is bluer than it was in 2006.

I'm wondering how Specter would do in a Democratic primary, though. I was thinking a lot of Democrats would want someone other than an 80-year-old refugee from the other party running for them, especially if his voting record doesn't shift to the left following the switch.

Name me a Democrat in Pennsylvania who has the name recognition, popularity, and fundraising ability of Arlen Specter. The only one who comes to mind is Fat Eddie himself, and he'd rather be Commissioner of Baseball. To that add the fact that national Democrats like Obama and Hillary Clinton will undoubtedly support him and campaign for him, as well as local Democrats like Michael Nutter. Plus Specter is and always had been popular in the Philadelphia area, city and suburbs both. I don't think his voting record is going to be a major issue; Pennsylvania Democrats, on the whole, are more conservative than many other northeastern Democrats (they elected Bob Casey, a pro-gun, pro-life Dem, after all).

[Surlethe]

Here's another perspective. Specter was elected in 1980 under the Reagan tent. The fact that he thinks the Republican party has moved out from under him and he's more comfortable in the right suburbs of the Democratic party (albeit as an independent) tells us just how far to the right this country's political center of gravity has moved.

[His Divine Shadow]

This whole "fascist" thing the GOP is doing is the most ridiculous PR stunt i´ve ever seen or heard of. I hope not many people are honestly falling for this bullshit.

The GOP is like 1984 coming to life, what I am reminded of is when they say "oceania has always been at war with eurasia". The GOP has been reduced to something like a brainwashing cult, like Scientology.

[salm]

This whole "fascist" thing the GOP is doing is the most ridiculous PR stunt i´ve ever seen or heard of. I hope not many people are honestly falling for this bullshit.

The GOP is like 1984 coming to life, what I am reminded of is when they say "oceania has always been at war with eurasia". The GOP has been reduced to something like a brainwashing cult, like Scientology.

I think on of the problems with politics in the US is that the two big parties don´t have voters. They have fans. Watching Americans discuss politics is often similar to watching Apple and Microsoft fanboys discussing which OS is better. They use obsene amounts of polemicising, slandering and bad mouthing and the degree of "my party right or wrong" seems much higher there than here. It often looks like they view an attack on their partys/candidates arguments as a personal attack on themselves.
People like Hannity and O´Rilley but also Olbermann would simply not have any kind of chance of getting aired on TV around here. Not even on the worst television equivalent to a gutter journal. The TV stations and also newspapers are a lot more neutral on political issues. They do more reporting and less judging. They don´t goad on rabbit fans, they more or less inform viewers.

Americans are just weird.

[Knife]

What's a rabbit fan?

Anyway, with only two parties, you run into the problem of tribalism where in the Parliamentary system, with so many to choose from but also the necessity of working amongst the smaller parties to get majorities, promotes less tribalism. Wow, now that is a run on sentence.

[ray245]

What's a rabbit fan?

Anyway, with only two parties, you run into the problem of tribalism where in the Parliamentary system, with so many to choose from but also the necessity of working amongst the smaller parties to get majorities, promotes less tribalism. Wow, now that is a run on sentence.

I would think that it would be better if you have only two major parties standing a chance to gain control of the excutve branch of government, and have more third parties in the legislative branch.

[salm]

What's a rabbit fan?

Sorry, i meant to say "rabid".

Anyway, with only two parties, you run into the problem of tribalism where in the Parliamentary system, with so many to choose from but also the necessity of working amongst the smaller parties to get majorities, promotes less tribalism. Wow, now that is a run on sentence.

That might be good explanation for that. Are there any examples of other countries with a two party system in which the voeters behave similarly?

[ray245]

That might be good explanation for that. Are there any examples of other countries with a two party system in which the voeters behave similarly?

Taiwan?

[RedImperator]

In American politics, if a third party gets big enough to make a respectable showing in congressional elections, the first thing that happens is that one or both established parties co-op its positions and absorb its supporters. There's never going to be a viable long-lived third party in the US with the system structured as it is, and there's no constituency for the kind of reforms that would be necessary to make it possible.

[Knife]

In American politics, if a third party gets big enough to make a respectable showing in congressional elections, the first thing that happens is that one or both established parties co-op its positions and absorb its supporters. There's never going to be a viable long-lived third party in the US with the system structured as it is, and there's no constituency for the kind of reforms that would be necessary to make it possible.

Or in rarer cases, one of the big parties shrinks and dies and the third one becomes the second. Damned Whigs.