March 31, 2009

Arlen Specter: From RINO to RICO

OK, folks. Once again, this isn’t hard.

This “card check” business – unions organizing an employer on the basis of public signups rather than secret ballots – is just plain W-R-O-N-G. Why not just issue labor bosses a few thousand crowbars and clubs and tell them to go out and “organize” to their hearts’ content? Duh.

Then explain why the decision of Sen. Arlen Specter, RINO (Republican In Name Only) of Pennsylvania, to oppose the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” he once co-sponsored was greeted by conservatives with such bowing, scraping, acclaim and adulation.

I get the import of Specter’s announcement – which basically squelched the union power grab for this year – to a right wing waiting to exhale. After all, as at least one conservative honcho has pointed out, card check is way more than a labor issue.

Check this out: The New York Times reported that unions shelled out nearly half a billion bucks to bag the 2008 election for President Obama, while unleashing a quarter of a million “volunteers” to reach 13 million voters in 24 states – in the last four days of the campaign. That’s what I call organizing.

Imagine what the union bosses could do with the compulsory dues of, say, another 10 million members. Buy a mere election? Hah. Peanuts.

How about bankrolling a generation of Democratic rule, complete with a filibuster-proof majority cramming the entire liberal agenda – global warming, gun control, protectionism, abortion, gay marriage, you name it – down America’s throat? Now we’re talking.

So yes, Specter’s revelation may have spelled R-E-L-I-E-F for Republicans and every card-carrying member of the vast right-wing conspiracy. But the Senator, card check’s only GOP supporter two years back, was only doing what he should have in the first place – standing up against a proposal that defies any semblance of truth, justice and the American way.

Moreover, Arlen’s Choice was one of cold, if clumsy, political calculation. As much as he wants union support for his 2010 re-election bid, he has to get through a primary first. And given his back-breaking desertion on President Obama’s debt-exploding stimulus package and three decades of departures from Republican orthodoxy, Specter knew he couldn’t afford another misstep.

So the Pennsylvanian morphed from RINO to RICO – Republican In the Crunch Only. In addition to the card check reversal, Specter opposed Elena Kagan, Obama’s radical choice for Solicitor General, and has proclaimed his readiness to stand in front of a Democratic steamroller on judicial appointments. Meanwhile, the Senator warned darkly of another specter – of GOP defeat in the general election should he be ousted by a conservative challenger next year.

But Republicans have a choice as well, and it’s time to stop buying Sen. Specter’s snake oil electoral elixir. Given the way Obama, Timothy Geithner and the rest of the Democratic team of tax evaders, bailouters, AIG-abetters, budget-busters and Gitmo-mollycoddlers are falling all over themselves, 2010 looks to be a banner year for the GOP. And the last such Republican bounceback in 1994 put a Keystone State conservative, Rick Santorum, in the Senate.

Meanwhile, those hoofbeats hot on the near-octogenarian Senator’s trail belong to former Congressman Pat Toomey, who lost a 2004 primary challenge to Specter by just 17,000 votes after a full-court press by the White House and Santorum to rescue the incumbent. No such cavalry charge is coming this time – and a recent poll puts Toomey 14 points ahead in the anticipated rematch.

Republicans won’t win, in Pennsylvania or elsewhere, by racing to the left with RINOs or RICOs. They’ll win by doing the right thing – practicing and convincingly promoting smaller, smarter, people-focused government.

One or two checks in the good government column for Arlen Specter won’t undo 30 years of bucking his party – and the voters’ best interests. Card check aside, his stimu-lust could mean another RINO bites the dust.