Lowman S. Henry makes a convincing case that RINOs who have more in common with Ed Rendell than Pennsylvania taxpayers are in control of the Pennsylvania Senate.

GOP-controlled state Senate lurches left - The Mercury

With Arlen Specter cleaning out his desk, it appears Lindsey Graham can now lay claim to the title of No. 1 RINO (Republican In Name Only) in Congress.

Lindsey Graham: Sellout - HUMAN EVENTS

From POLITICO:

The Washington think tank industry has launched a thousand blue-ribbon commissions and furrowed-brow panels to brood over the public's loss of trust in government and its leaders. Why are people so cynical?

Last week, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist raised his hand with the answer.

It turns out that one big reason people assume that politicians are slippery opportunists whose words can't be trusted is that many of them are slippery opportunists whose words can't be trusted.

Read the full article at the link below:

Great moments in opportunism - James Hohmann and John F. Harris - POLITICO.com

Where does Arlen Specter stand on the issues? It depends on which day of the week it is. Specter is pushing John Kerry aside as king of the flip-flop.

Specter sat down a few days ago for and extensive interview with The Mercury.

On health care, Specter said "I will only vote on a health care bill that does not add to the deficit."

Does that mean he will defy Barack Obama and Harry Reid?

I also enjoyed this quote from Specter about the fact that it took him a couple of decades to figure out he wans't a true Republican: "I found I was voting more often with the Democrats than the Republicans during my tenure."

Check out what he has to say on a variety of issues ... before he changes his mind again.

Read the story at the newspaper's Web site, where you can also view videos of Specter at the offices of The Mercury.

Opposition has emerged to the far-left policies of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.

Moderate Democrats in the U.S. Senate have formed a working group to oppose the liberal ideologues who are running the White House and House of Representatives.

Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana announced the coalition this morning on the Joe Scarborough program on MSNBC.

"We care for our country more than our party," Bayh said.

A formal press conference will make the group official with 15 Democrats forming a centrist coalition that will serve as a firewall to far-left agenda and screwball economic policies pushed by Obama and Pelosi.

The loyal opposition was supposed to come from Senate Republicans, but the defections of Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins ended any hope Republicans could put a stop to the Obama agenda.

This is welcome news in a country that has lurched toward socialism since Obama took office.

This is also a very shrewd political move by Bayh, who is positioning himself to challenge Obama in 2012. This country is teetering on the brink of economic collapse thanks to Obama's ill-advised economic policies and The Chosen One is looking more like a one-term failure a la Jimmy Carter.

Democrats won't make the same mistake by renominating a failed president. Look for Bayh to steer the party back from the left-wing abyss.

If you didn't catch Thursday's "Talking Politics with Tony Phyrillas and Mike Pincus," you missed a lively discussion about the future of Sen. Arlen Specter.

Mike and I agree that Specter is finished in the Republican Party. If he runs for re-election in 2010 as a Republican, Specter will lose in the GOP primary, most likely to former Congressman Pat Toomey, who came close to knocking off Specter in 2004.

Mike gave two good reasons why Specter can't win, even though he's the incumbent and has a ton of money. First, Specter has lost all support in the Republican Party even from the pragmatic party officials who held their nose and supported Specter despite his tendency to vote with Democrats. Second, most of the "moderate" Republicans who supported Specter in the past left the party in 2008. They are now registered Democrats or independents and are unlikely to switch their party affiliation back to Republican so they can vote in the 2010 GOP primary. Specter's base is gone.

Specter's only option for retaining his Senate seat is to switch his party affiliation to Democrat. The question is, would the Democrats take him back? Pennsylvania is trending blue and the Democrats could win the Senate seat without Specter, so why take a GOP retread when the Dems could run a younger, more liberal candidate. If Specter can wheel-and-deal his way to the Democratic Party nomination, it sets up a November 2010 showdown between Toomey and Specter. And that's a toss-up.

But there's another scenario, one that Mike and I believe is more probable. Specter will not seek re-election in 2010. This would go a long way in explaining why he betrayed the Republican Party and supported Obama's trillion-dollar bailout plan.

Specter can bow out of the 2010 race by citing health reasons (not to mention that he'll be 80 by the time the election rolls around).

This clears the way for Pennsylvania's worst nightmare. Gov. Ed Rendell will probably succeed Specter in the U.S. Senate seat.

Rendell did say after his 2006 re-election to a second term as governor that it was his last political campaign, but Rendell has lied before.

And despite the damage Rendell has done to the state during his failed tenure as governor, he's still popular enough with Democrats (and the Specter RINOs) to easily win the Senate seat. Bob Casey Jr. and Ed Rendell reunited in the Senate. Oh, the horror.

Former Congressman Pat Toomey, who now heads the Club for Growth, narrowly lost to Sen. Arlen Specter in the 2004 Republican primary in Pennsylvania. How different things would be today if Toomey had knocked off Specter.

Writing in National Review Online, Toomey said the surrender of three "liberal Republicans" to the Democratic stimulus plan not only cost the party, but will damage the nation.

From Toomey's column:

If Senate Republicans had united as their counterparts in the House did, President Obama would have had no choice but to include Republican proposals to cut income-tax rates, along with taxes on businesses and investment. These measures would have encouraged workers to be more productive, freed American businesses currently laboring under one of the highest corporate-tax rates in the world, and encouraged investors to support our ailing financial markets.

To be sure, Republicans would have been forced to accept a large dose of spending, but Democrats would have been similarly forced to accept tax cuts they refused to include in the current bill. That is what a real bipartisan compromise would have looked like — not this $800 billion–plus spending spree that tosses a couple of crumbs to Specter, Collins, and Snowe.

The Senate's compromise bill is as fundamentally flawed as the original version. While its supporters claim it will create millions of jobs, they neglect to mention all the jobs it will destroy. The money for the bill has to come from somewhere — and that will be straight out of the private sector, where it could have been invested far more efficiently and productively, creating jobs in the process. The subsidies for "green jobs" will, perversely, end up destroying jobs as the country is forced to waste money producing overpriced, inefficient energy.

Read the full column, "A Capitulation, Not a Compromise," at National Review Online.

Arlen Specter turns 79 today. That's considered young for the U.S. Senate, but it's clear after Specter's defection to the Democrats on the "stimulus" bill that it's time for Specter to retire from the Senate (His current six-year term ends in 2010).

At the very least, Specter should change his party registration to Democratic since he has abandoned the Republican Party time and time again.

From political commentator Lowman S. Henry, writing at Lincoln Blog:

Specter's willingness to abandon his party on the stimulus package is an ominous sign for what will happen on what will be the most critical vote of this legislative session: Card Check. The bill that would take away from workers the right to a secret ballot when deciding whether or not to form and join a union is the litmus test. If Specter defects, labor unions will have the 60 votes they need in the senate to invoke cloture and pass the bill. It would be the single biggest legislative defeat for the business community and worker rights in history.

Also check out a new column from pundit Dick Morris on "Benedict Arlen."

Morris says Specter, along with fellow RINOs Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe "have sold out their party, their state and their supporters."

From Morris' column:

Collins, Snowe and Specter had a chance to send a message to Obama that he had to deal with the Republican Party to avert a filibuster. They could have made it clear that genuine bipartisan cooperation was necessary to pass legislation. These three senators, pledged to cut taxes and oppose massive growth in federal spending, could have demanded a 2-to-1 ratio for tax cuts over spending, rather than the reverse, as Obama is succeeding in getting.

Instead, the three wimped out and caved in for peanuts from Obama. In doing so, they completely stripped their party of any leverage. There was no point in having gotten 41 votes if the three weakest links could sell the party out.

Specter has no business running as a Republican. Pennsylvania voters deserve better.