So what’s going on with Senator John McCain? Chris Nolan writes about McCain…and says we should be keeping an eye on the McCain/Arlen Specter combo that could mean the GOP’s conservative wing won’t have a clear path from hereon in:
There is, however, something else brewing that’s almost as interesting as McCain’s out-of-the-closet presidential ambitions. In fact, this particular fight might serve as the platform on which McCain builds his presidential campaign. Increasingly, Senate Republicans are willing to take on the conservative wing of their party. McCain is smartly leadling that fight. And it promises to be a doozie because it means that Republicans like McCain will be taking on the lame duck Bush administration.
Nolan recounts McCain’s history of confronting the far right, which goes back to 2000. He also believes McCain is racking up points in the filibuster compromise so he can take the lead in significant immigration reform — a kind of reform the White House may not wish to see.
But here’s the tantilizing part of his analysis:
McCain’s not the only guy to watch in this little battle for a more moderate Republican Party, however. Take a hard look at Sen. Arlen Specter. Take a hard look at Sen. Arlen Specter. And listen to what he had to say on ABC’s This Week on Sunday to Sen. Sam Brownbeck, an opponent of the stem cell legislation Specter says he has enough vote to pass.
Read our previous post here (it has the link to the Crooks And Liars video of this segment so you can judge for yourself).
Specter, punished by social conservatives for saying that the next Supreme Court nominee shouldn’t necessarily be a pro-choice judge, is clearly on the warpath. Facing a terminal illness, mocked by his party and never a guy with a warm and cozy approach to live, Specter’s got little to lose at this point. And he knows it. He’s going to have a smart, equally fearless friend in McCain because once you’ve spent five years in a POW camp there isn’t a whole lot worse that can happen to you.
Like McCain, Specter’s a a practiced Senate insider who’s got his share of enemies, critics and detractors. Like McCain, he’s not an easy man to like. But he’s also a very sick man. And he’s beginning to sound like an angry one, too.
Indeed, you have McCain, who is confronting his party’s conservative wing with the same kind of bravado that he displayed throughout his life. And now you have Specter, who — sorry to remove one of your innuendos Rush and Sean — clearly is not going to be able to or be around to run for re-election again — so he can’t be accused of says now for personal ambition. You now get a sense watching Specter that he has truly had it with political posturing on these issues. Will he go for broke…deciding he’s going to leave a different kind of legacy that some GOPers had in mind?
What has been missing so far has been the extra muscle those who don’t agree with the GOP’s social conservatives have needed to put up a tough fight. Senator Harry Reid (who has turned out to be far craftier and more media savvy than anyone believed, if you go back and read what was written about him when he became Minority Leader) is not enough. We could see McCain and Specter leading GOP moderates (and perhaps eventually some GOP libertarians)attempting to put the emergency brake on their party’s takeover which could make the coming months quite interesting. And lively…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.