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I really hate it when "parties" do really stupid things. And I'm not talking about Obama's bribe and bait little play with Arlen Specter. Heck he's been voting from that side of the aisle so long I just figured he had forgotten where his seat was. I'm talking about two of my heroes George W. Bush and Rick Santorum taking some really bad advice and snuggling up to the snake-oil Senator when he last ran for re-election. It caused me incredible pain at the time, but the thinking by all the smart people in the room like some of the...

Senator Arlen Specter (PA), who switched from the Republican to Democrat party on Tuesday (April 28), admitted that he did so due to an unwillingness to let voters decide his fate. “I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate,” he said in the statement. “I don’t have to say anything to them. They’ve said it to me,” Specter said. Specter, 79, has been a Republican for his five terms in the Senate. However, he had recently come under fire for supporting the Obama stimulus plan and was expected to face a...

HUMAN EVENTS has learned from staff sources that Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa) is about to announce his switch to the Democratic Party. Developing….

Breaking news on FNC

Statement by Senator Arlen Specter I have been a Republican since 1966. I have been working extremely hard for the Party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation. Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party...

WASHINGTON – Several officials say veteran Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania intends to switch parties, advancing his own hopes of winning a new term next year while pushing Democrats one step closer to a 60-vote filibuster-resistant majority. The sources said an announcement could come later in the day — or Wednesday. The officials who provided the information did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss his plans. Specter is a 79-year-old veteran of five Senate terms, and one of only a handful of moderate Republicans left in Congress in a party made up largely...

The resignation of Karl Rove ends the tenure of a man who has occupied a unique place in American history. No other presidential appointee has ever had such a strong influence on politics and policy, and none is likely to do so again anytime soon. Only Robert Kennedy exerted similar influence, and he had little to do with electoral politics during his brother's presidency. Rove brought to his work a wide and deep knowledge of U.S. history, political statistics, demography and public policy. He worked hard and, for most of three years, under an unjustified threat of indictment. He does...

The resignation of Karl Rove ends the tenure of a man who has occupied a unique place in American history. No other presidential appointee has ever had such a strong influence on politics and policy, and none is likely to do so again anytime soon. Only Robert Kennedy exerted similar influence, and he had little to do with electoral politics during his brother’s presidency. Rove brought to his work a wide and deep knowledge of U.S. history, political statistics, demography, and public policy. He worked hard and, for most of three years, under an unjustified threat of indictment. He does...

{Karl Rove: Bush's Napoleon} {Like the French emperor in Russia, Rove's villainy is caused mostly by his failure to quit after his high note in 2004.} There's an old maxim that if Napoleon had been struck by a cannon ball on his way toward Moscow, he would be remembered as an unrivaled military genius and liberator. But Napoleon overstayed history's welcome and was treated harshly for it, first by the Russians and Mother Nature, then by his own people and, ultimately, by the historians. In this and other respects, Karl Rove strikes me as a Napoleonic figure. He won an...

WASHINGTON -- The most useless speculation today in Washington is whom Chief of Staff Josh Bolten might choose to replace Karl Rove at the White House. He is genuinely irreplaceable. Nobody will attempt to combine the political and policy functions as Rove has done. Indeed, fellow Republicans question whether he should have attempted the feat himself. Rove was a principal target of congressional Democrats even before February 2005, when he became deputy chief of staff in addition to senior adviser to President Bush. But the combination of the duties intensified the assault on him. Prominent Republicans of late have privately...

As a political strategist, Karl Rove offered a brilliant answer to the wrong question. The question he answered so successfully was a political one: How could Republicans win elections after Bill Clinton steered the Democrats to the center? The question he unfortunately ignored was a policy question: What does the nation need — and how can conservatives achieve it? Mr. Rove answered his chosen question by courting carefully selected constituencies with poll-tested promises: tax cuts for traditional conservatives; the No Child Left Behind law for suburban moderates; prescription drugs for anxious seniors; open immigration for Hispanics; faith-based programs for evangelicals...

(AP) Karl Rove deserves as much credit for spoiling George W. Bush's presidency as he does for creating it _ which is to say he had a lot to do with both. The strategist's political genius helped make Bush president. His arrogance helped make Bush a lame duck. "Rove is the model for all future presidential advisers _ disciplined, smart and personally tight with the commander in chief. With that power comes all of the negative baggage when policy and governing failures erupt out of control," said Republican consultant Scott Reed. "He has kept remarkably cool as the GOP has...

Mr. Rove's political influence has been historic, In 2002, the president's party gained seats in both the House and Senate in a first midterm election for the first time since 1934. And in 2004, for only the second time in history, a president won re-election while helping his party gain seats in both houses of Congress; the other time was 1936. Much has been made of John Kerry's ineptitude, but the senator won some eight million more votes than Al Gore did in 2000, and Mr. Rove claims Democrats outspent Republicans by $148 million thanks to billionaire donations to "527"...