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August 22, 2008
 Specter Marches On…Or At Least He’d Like To
By Joe
Guzzardi
Imagine for the moment that you are the Vice President of
Human Resources for a huge American corporation seeking to
fill a key position.
Among the resumes submitted to you is one from a sickly
80-year old man wanting not only to be hired but also to be
signed on for a
six-year guaranteed contract.
His resume would go straight into the trash and the V.P.
in charge of personnel could be forgiven for thinking that
some nut case submitted it.
Nut case or not, that’s exactly what
Sen. Arlen Specter will be asking
Pennsylvania voters to do in 2010—re-elect him to one of
America’s most important jobs even though he’s recovering
from his second bout with cancer and would be 86 when his term
ends—unless he expires before it does.
We at
VDARE.COM have written about how curious sets of
circumstances can propel otherwise unqualified politicians into
high office from which, unfortunately, they
cannot easily be dislodged.
Curiously, all three of the most prominent examples rank high
among our biggest immigration reform foes.
California Senator Dianne Feinstein is one. Feinstein is a
hard charger for guest worker programs and a nasty trick called
“private bills” tailored for individual alien
sob stories.
Another glaring case in point is
Barack Obama who, an
obscure state senator only a few years ago, is on the verge
the U.S. presidency. Obama supports everything bad ranging from
licenses for aliens and
open borders.
To that list we’ll include Specter who, during his stint as
Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, did all he could to
push through amnesty and huge increases in visas and green cards
for foreign-born workers.
Specter’s biography as an elected official is telling.
When
Specter, now a token Republican, started
his political career in Philadelphia in the early 1960s, he
was a liberal Democrat.
At the time, the Irish ran
Philadelphia’s Democratic Party machine. Since
Specter is Jewish, the Democrats rejected his interest in
running for District Attorney.
Out of expediency, Specter turned Republican, an easy thing
to do since the Republican Party in Philadelphia was then and is
now
virtually non-existent.
Running as a Republican in 1965, he wooed the Democratic
Jewish voters concentrated in Northeast
Philadelphia and convinced them
to switch parties to vote for him. With their support, he became
Pennsylvania’s District Attorney.
Appointed to the Warren
Commission formed to investigate John F. Kennedy’s assassination,
Specter co-authored the controversial
“single-bullet theory.”
Specter remained in office in office until
1973 when the state’s
Democratic majority threw him out.
Between 1973 and 1980 (when he finally won a Senate seat
with
a mere 2 percentage point margin because incumbent
Richard Schweiker accepted Ronald Reagan’s appointment as
Secretary of Health and Human Services),
Specter suffered several major setbacks.
In 1976 and 1978, voters rejected Specter’s two primary
bids—one for U.S. Senate and another for governor. And his
earlier 1967 run for Mayor of Philadelphia was also
unsuccessful. Finally, in 1996 his presidential campaign never
got to first base.
Summing up, voters have preferred candidates other than
Specter four times.
To help you put into perspective how long ago Specter’s
Senate tenure began, check out some of the
other names in the 1980 races:
Barry Goldwater, Adlai Stevenson III,
Russell Long, Dan Quayle. Bob Packwood,
Gary Hart,
Thomas Eagleton, John Glenn and Bob Dole (most recently seen
hawking Viagra on television.)
Can Specter pull off a 2010 victory?
Specter’s record offers plenty of meat for whoever may end
up challenging him.
And while we would like to think that Specter’s immigration
position would do him in —the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Education Fund
awarded him its “Excellence in Government Service Award”—the
reality is that the national question isn’t high enough on
Pennsylvania’s radar screen to expect that.
But as long as Specter gets the boot, the reasons behind it
aren’t really that significant.
Whether Specter’s opponent comes in the form of a vigorous
Republican primary challenger or a Democrat in the general
election—rumored
to be MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews—here’s what he’ll
have to work with:
- Specter has the
worst voting record of anyone in Congress on the crucial
issue of
more visas for foreign-born workers. Immigration may not be
important in Pennsylvania but
jobs are. Yet working along side
Ted Kennedy, one of the Senate’s most liberal Democrats,
Specter devised
the sale for $500 each to major American corporations of
hundreds of thousands of additional work visas and permanent
green cards to hire foreign workers for high-tech and
professional jobs in the U.S. for periods of between three and
six years.
- Specter also seeks to
meet with Cuban President Raul Castro and Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez. These are described as “follow up” visits to
his three earlier sessions with Fidel Castro and one with
Chavez.
[Specter Seeks Meeting with Raul Castro, By Kimberly
Hefling, Associated Press, July 30, 2008]
In what may be a foretelling moment for Specter’s upcoming
challenge, in 2004 Republican Congressman and
strong immigration reform candidate Pat Toomey gave Specter
the scare of his political life.
Only a last minute trip to Pennsylvania by
President George Bush and
Vice President Dick Cheney delivered the nomination to
Specter.
But the cost was great. Specter’s
presence on the Republican ticket—instead of Toomey’s—hurt
the party up and down the ballot.
Not only didn’t Specter deliver Pennsylvania to Bush but neither
did he help the other Republican Congressional candidates
throughout the state. In Specter’s home base of Northeast
Philadelphia and in the state capital of Harrisburg, the two
Republican candidates went down.[Thank
you, Arlen, by Timothy Carney, National Review,
November 4, 2004]
Given Specter’s negatives—his age, health, pro-immigration/anti-American
jobs positions, his role as a terrorist/ Communist appeaser
and his drag on the GOP ticket, the Republican Party’s mission
is clear.
Pick a true conservative to challenge Specter in the primary and
get behind him.
In 2004,Toomey came close to knocking Specter out. The right
2010 candidate should be able to finish him off.
Joe Guzzardi [e-mail
him] is the Editor of VDARE.COM Letters to the Editor.
In addition, he is an English teacher at the Lodi Adult School and has
been writing
a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive
to
VDARE.COM. |
