GWB and Rove are smart guys. They decided to support Specter. I'm quite sure the president's men covered all the angles on this one. They decided that a happy Spector was better than a pi$$ed off Specter. (Specter, by the way is f'ing brilliant) A senator, particularly a newly re-elected senator, answers to nobody. The same logic that led Rove to support Specter over Toomey applies now in the chairmanship debate. Make nice with this guy because he is smarter than most people ever dream of being. If he votes his conscience on any nominee, I have no problem with that. He would be duty bound to get the president's nominees an up or down vote and I think he would live up to that.
You make two assumptions;
That Bush didn't just support Specter to maintain control of the Senate, whatever the other costs of his re-election might be.
That Bush and Rove made the right choice in trusting Specter with *nothing* to bind him save his word. Which he also gave to the other side...
So what will the "pi$$ed off" Specter do to them? They now have a 10-seat majority over the democrats, not counting Cheney's vote. Lott had just as much seniority and Senate clout as Specter does and Republicans took him down when he got too big for his britches.
Specter's history proves he's unreliable and his "word" is no good. To hand him the SJC is to say goodbye to all Bush's important federal bench appointments.
What a relief to know this, I been worrying all this time for nothing then, thanks.</sarcasm>
GWB and Rove are smart guys...
I don't doubt that.
In fact, they are probably going to smart their way into being the minority party after the results of the '06 mid term election are in because they insist on demonestrating to their base that once they vote for them, they can go fly a kite. There opinion does not matter.
They did all they could to tick off their base after the '00 elections. This resulted in a higher turnout in '04 than in '00. So I guess they said, "In '00 we tried to tick off our base by lavishly funding the National Endowment of the Arts so "artists" could show pictures of Christ under elephant shit and all that did was increase the turnout in '04. Let us really show the contempt we hold them in now and in '06 our candidates will win in a landslide."
Well all good things must come to an end. If thy persist [and I believe that they are going to]their will be a landslise, only it will be in the Democrats favor. Their base will stay home while the Democrat base will go vote.
It is their choice.