Quick Thoughts On The Specter Switch
Friday, May 1st, 2009 by adminKeith Hennessy offers some tactical consequences of the party switch by Sen. Arlen Specter. He argues these are the likely effects:
- I imagine Sen. Specter’s voting patterns on issues that are clearly high personal priorities for him, like judicial issues, health, and appropriations, will show almost no appreciable change. I think the same will be true for headline issues like Iraq, Afghanistan, and terrorist surveillance.
- The biggest effect will be on the small votes, as well as votes on things that are not high priorities for Sen. Specter. If he behaves like other party switchers, his new party will get many of these votes, because his default vote will switch from R to D. This benefits Leader Reid in that he has more flexibility with other Democrats who might be tempted to vote against the party on a particular issue.
- The same will be true for many procedural votes, on which I expect him to vote with his new party.
- But on cloture votes, where Sen. Specter has often been the marginal Republican vote, it is easy to imagine him being a less-than-reliable Democrat vote for cloture, just as he was a less-than-reliable Republican vote against cloture.
- Assuming Sen. Specter wins re-election, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans on committees will improve slightly for Democrats. This has a significant practical effect on the legislation that actually reaches the Senate floor.
- I assume Sen. Specter’s chance for re-election increases substantially.
We’d just like to welcome Sen. Specter into the ranks of Democrats who are wary about the Employee Free Choice Act.
Tags: Sen. Arlen Specter
