"This article makes no sense."
The proof is in the pudding. Roberts and Alito are on the Court.
Specter bolting years later and becoming a Dem was due to the inept GOP leadership at the time, and Specter's slipperiness.
I’m sure Rick supported him because he was returning the favor for getting Specter’s endorsement for himself. To me that would have been maybe a better answer. Say that Specter helped him in his run and he made a promise to do the same for him, and couldn’t go back on his promise even though he disagreed with him on some issues. And for that matter throw in that he doesn’t consider an endorsement a big deal because he trusts the voters to make up their own minds. Just look at how Romney’s endorsements in South Carolina, Minnesota, etc. worked out.
Well, actually, Santorum backed Specter for three reasons:
1) Because Rove and Bush twisted his arm, and said that Toomey couldn’t get elected.
2) Because Bush said that he needed Specter to confirm his SCOTUS choices. Don’t underestimate Specter on that; I don’t trust the guy any further than I can kick him, but he was very skillful at that sort of job. And he succeeded. The Democrats had enough Senators to filibuster, as they have often done to block appointments, but Specter put the pressure on them—before he went back to his usual crazy ways.
3) Santorum endorsed Specter because Specter had endorsed him. It wasn’t easy for a conservative to win in that state, so Specter’s “centrist” endorsement of a conservative was valuable. Rick returned the favor.
Rick later lost in 2006 for a number of reasons. I would chiefly blame Bush and Rove, who won in a landslide in 2004 and then proceeded to blow it by disappointing the base. Few conservatives won in 2006. It was a Democrat landslide. And Rick was further handicapped by a popular opponent and by the stupid Toomey supporters who stayed home in a snit. Good work, guys, putting Casey into office.
It makes perfect sense, as a matter of fact it was exactly the argument GW made. Unless you have another reason for the comment.
I assume it’s many things, including payback for Specter supporting Santorum in his first Senate race, and throughout his career.
Much like Sarah Palin endorsed McCain over a more conservative primary challenger in a senate race in 2010, apparently as people here said to pay him back for picking her in 2008.
Now, Specter turned out to be a worse senator than even John McCain, so while the decisions were similar in type, they were not in scope.
Of course, if Toomey had lost in 2004, as he was likely to do, Obamacare would have passed in 2009 anyway, after the democrats took over (a democrat elected in 2004 would have been more liberal than even Arlen Specter was after he turned democrat).
It is however possible that even with a democrat senator, we’d have gotten the two supreme court nominees — hard to say whether the RINO who would have ended up in the judiciary committee would have been more likely to oppose the conservative judges; at least Specter didn’t.
But it’s really easy to look back 6 years later and pretend you’d have known the outcome. Fact is, people who serve together, and have received political help throughout their careers, tend to help back, like Sarah Palin did in 2010 with McCain.
And if McCain votes with the democrats, I guess some will blame Palin for it, but I’m guessing most won’t. (The other argument would surely be that her endorsement was meaningless to that contest, while Santorum’s was critical. Although it’s hard to imagine how much help an endorsement from a guy who loses his election 2 years later by almost 20% could have been.....)
Toomey would not be head of the Judiciary who votes candidate up or down. That has been explained numerous times. Toomey would have just been a regular vote with ZERO power.
That is laughable on its face. Unfortunate as it might have been no replacement would have had the influence that Specter had on the Judiciary Committee. That is how the Senate works sometimes. It's just the reality of it.
Spector was the chairman of the judiciary committee. He could have made it very difficult to get good appointments through. I didn’t like it at the time that bush and santorum did it, but it proved to be smart to get conservatives through the committees.
According to Wiki, had Spector lost in 2004 but the GOP had gotten the majority, next in line for the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Widestance, er Larry Craig.
Maybe that had something to do with it?