[TimG]

hrothgar, on Apr 28 2009, 12:45 PM, said:

Even if Specter's policy oriented votes remain completely unchanged, flipping his votes on proceedural matters suddenly becomes decisive. The Republicans no longer have enough votes to sustain a fillibuster, which means that policy votes can now pass on a simply up and down vote.

Doesn't this make 59 democrats and 60 are needed to be filibuster proof? At least that is what the report I heard on NPR indicated.

[y66]

Quote

Senate Republican leaders appeared ashen after Specter made a brief appearance in their weekly policy luncheon to tell them the news in person. "Obviously, we are not happy that Senator Specter has decided to become a Democrat,"  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters, attempting to minimize the blow.

Ashen? Somebody cue Roy Orbison.

Quote

... Yes, now you're gone
And, from this moment on
I'll be crying, crying
Crying, crying
Yeah, crying, crying
Over you

.
Indeed.

gn Roy. gn Arlen. gn GOP.

[PassedOut]

TimG, on Apr 28 2009, 09:56 PM, said:

Doesn't this make 59 democrats and 60 are needed to be filibuster proof? At least that is what the report I heard on NPR indicated.

Franken is waiting in the wings to be seated from Minnesota, possibly in June. That will be 60.

[Oof Arted]

mmm I thought they had just found him guilty of murder

[Winstonm]

Does this mean the magic bullet is now a Democratic hypothesis?

[Al_U_Card]

Winstonm, on Apr 29 2009, 08:00 PM, said:

Does this mean the magic bullet is now a Democratic hypothesis?

I believe that it is now referred to as the "quantum bullet" because it has to be in 2 places at once and travelling in different directions, simultaneously....

[y66]

At least one member of Senator Specter's former party gets it:

Quote

IT is disheartening and disconcerting, at the very least, that here we are today — almost exactly eight years after Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party — witnessing the departure of my good friend and fellow moderate Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, for the Democratic Party. And the announcement of his switch was all the more painful because I believe it didn’t have to be this way.

...

Senator Specter indicated that his decision was based on the political situation in Pennsylvania, where he faced a tough primary battle. In my view, the political environment that has made it inhospitable for a moderate Republican in Pennsylvania is a microcosm of a deeper, more pervasive problem that places our party in jeopardy nationwide.

There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.

It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”

-- Olympia Snowe, Republican senator from Maine.

Tolerate disagreement? Sputter, sputter.