Word: specter
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Pollster Terry Madonna of Franklin & Marshall College said that Specter essentially had no choice. Democrats far outstripped Republicans in the run-up to the 2008 election, with a 10-to-1 advantage in new registrations and a 3-to-1 advantage in party switches, a change that drew mostly from the moderate suburban voters who had been Specter's political base. That leakage had slowed considerably since the election, but there was still a steady drift toward Democrats statewide. "It was a question of political survival," Madonna said. "Our last poll, he does better with Democrats than Republicans; he made...
...room and said, "If only you'd consider switching sides, then we'd all be on the same team and this would be a lot easier." Looking back on that moment, Democrat Nelson recalls something that seems far more telling now than it did at the time: Arlen Specter was the only one of them who didn't laugh...
Maybe the Pennsylvania Senator knew he was bound to wind up on the other side of the aisle eventually. Democrats - including Vice President Joe Biden, with whom he had shared many a ride on Amtrak when they were both commuting Senators - had been wooing him for years. Specter, 79, had been a Democrat until 1965. But when his latest turnabout finally happened, it caught the entire capital by surprise and altered everyone's calculation of what is now possible. Assuming that the interminable Minnesota recount battle finally ends with Al Franken being awarded the Senate seat - he holds...
...does not give Obama an unfettered hand. On all sorts of issues, from health care to energy policy, Senate majority leader Harry Reid will still have to bring along his own right flank - moderate Democrats such as Nelson, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, Indiana's Evan Bayh and now Specter. And not everything that is about to come before the Senate splits the Democrats along ideological lines. On climate change, for instance, the make-or-break votes come from a diverse group of 16 Democrats from left and center who say they will not support any bill that would impose crippling...
...Specter, he has already declared that the majority to which he now belongs should not count him as an "automatic 60th vote." That's an understatement. Independent to the point of being exasperating, Specter was never a reliable Republican vote and isn't likely to be much more dependable for Democrats. He played a pivotal role in defeating the Supreme Court nomination of conservative icon Robert Bork in 1987 and famously invoked Scottish law to vote "not proved," therefore not guilty, in Bill Clinton's impeachment trial. Yet Democrats should not forget that he voted for George W. Bush...