Where In the World Is Arlen Specter?
New Specter will be just like Old Specter, voting with the Democrats sometime and Republicans others, and with a much more even split than most/all other Senators…In short, the Specter switch will matter a tiny bit at most. All it does is shift the filibuster pivot “one person” to the left, and even with an ostensible vanishing moderates problem in the Senate, there are still enough moderate Senators that there just isn’t that much policy space between, say, a Old Specter and a Snowe…My prediction in brief. We’ll see plenty of gridlock — much more than the 100-day-high pundits have prognosticated. Furthermore, if and when major legislation is passed, it will happen via major compromises that make the final product look much more like what Old Specter wanted than what Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid want.
That is Keith Krehbiel, commenting at Nolan McCarty’s blog. Nolan isn’t convinced:
As I originally pointed out, Keith’s prediction that Specter would not move much isn’t really borne out on data from other party switchers.
Nor is it born out by how Specter has voted thus far. Via Jeff Lewis, Simon Jackman posts this graph, which, based on 14 roll call votes, locates Democrat Specter to the left of Republican Specter:
Of course, 14 votes is thin evidence. Time will tell. See more at Nolan’s blog. See also Brendan Nyhan on the as-yet-unmodeled “unprincipled hack” factor.
Comments
Wait, McCarty said party would matter and Krehbiel said it wouldn’t?
Also, Kerry is the most liberal member of the Senate! Rove was right!
Posted by: Seth Masket | May 12, 2009 12:01 AM
Specter will move 5-10 senators to the left. While Specter will continue his iconoclastic style on a few issues, his default position will switch from Republican to Democratic. That is enough to move him to the left with no arm twisting.
Posted by: Steven Smith | May 13, 2009 08:51 AM
Can we recognize this graph as an example of how invalid the assumption that a vote against the Democratic “position” is a vote for the Republican “position”?
I can assure you Russ Feingold is not/was not/never has been the 3rd most conservative Democrat at any moment in the history of his career.
Furthermore, with a set of just 14 votes for Specter, this measure is even less valid than usual. Not all votes are equally ideological in substance, or necessarily ideological at all.
Posted by: JC | May 15, 2009 01:29 PM