Kevin DeAnna

April 28, 2009

It’s not like we didn’t see this coming.  Arlen Specter made de jure what was already de facto and has almost certainly given the Democrats the magic number of 60 Senators.  There is now a filibuster proof majority for the most far left President in American history.  Somewhere, actually probably soon on a cable news show, Pat Toomey is saying “I told you so.”

With all the tea parties, the infighting between the Alternative Right and the non-Alternative Right and the different factions in the Paul movement and all the other drama, the brutal reality is that Obama, the stimulus, and the managed social democracy that we are moving towards are all popular.  Even with all the infighting, all the factions of the right have probably been more united now than at any time since the Iraq War.  The “tea parties,” whether or not they were co-opted, were the product of every possible wing of the conservative movement working together.  What else could unite Redstate.com (where you couldn’t even mention Ron Paul for fear of being banned) and the Ron Paul movement, many of whom openly despise the GOP?  April 15 was about as big a mobilization as you possibly could have, with everyone (even alternative ones) more or less pulling in the same direction.

What the Specter defection shows is that politicans are not intimidated by it.  The political winds are still with Obama, the stimulus and wealth redistribution.  Moreover, once new entitlements are in place it is almost impossible to remove them through democratic means.  Now that the GOP is officially a powerless rump, we can expect to get a lot more of them.