ARLEN SPECTER ISN'T IN KANSAS OR THE GOP ANYMORE

Arlen Specter: Tip of the Iceberg for many problems
Guest Commentary-with permission- by FreddieVee
Yesterday's Arlen Specter story really started long before Kansas born Mr. Specter became a member of Congress in 1980. When I was a child in the 1950's, my mother was very active politically and she would attend Democratic party meetings where she met both the eventual Mayor of New York City and eventual Governor of New York State. But, she never had a choice in their selection to run.

In those days, decisions about who ran for a City Council seat, Congressional Seat, the Governor's Mansion, the White House or for Mayor were normally made by a group of old, out of shape, cigar smoking and balding men; Party insiders, big wigs or fat cats they were sometimes called, but they were also known as the bosses. The system left a lot of good people on the outside looking in and was inherently unfair to females and minorities. It was a truly a blot on democracy.

But back in those days (while I was in Junior and Senior High School) Liberal New York State found a way to elect two Republican U.S. Senators: Kenneth Keating and Jacob Javits as well as Governor Nelson Rockefeller.

Both Keating and Javits were more moderate and very much more Liberal than just about any Democratic Senator from the South (which is why much to my mother's chagrin, I was a Republican at first). Both Keating and Javits, as Senators, were probably more moderate than any of today's Republican Senators; including the two ladies from Maine, Senator Susan Collins and Senator Olympia Snowe.

But more important than Keating and Javits’ moderation in voting was their moderation in legislating. They could compromise and they would debate with civility. They, as well as other then serving Senators did not resort to filibusters at every excuse to avoid passing a bill favored by the Democrats. But it was not only Keating and Javits who were more moderate than the majority of today's members of both houses of Congress. The Congressmen of that era were more civil –as was society in general- and they reached compromises (on most issues) more easily.

What’s my opinion as to why the change in civility in public affairs? Not too long after I graduated High School the push to make politics more democratic gained increasing steam. Some saw it as simple progress in the evolution of democracy, while some saw it as a way to get rid of the system of bosses with it's inherent cronyism, nepotism, corruption, bribery and payoffs. The method for ending the reign of the bosses was the increased usage of primary voting. It sounded like a wonderful idea until it was in practice for a while. Voter apathy and a system of choosing general election candidates by primary go together like oil and water, and the more primaries we had, the more apathetic the voting public became.

As you probably know, any good polling company can inquire into the opinions of a few thousand people and tell you who is going to win an election in which millions of people are going to vote. But that poll makes the assumption that the few thousand people are as random as are the millions of voters.

For example, if you had asked 3,000 Republicans who was going to win the 2008 Presidential Election, you would have predicted John McCain in the biggest landslide in American electoral history. But 3,000 Republicans out of a poll of 3,000 perspective voters is not a random sample nor an appropriate sample because it does not accurately reflect the diversity of the general electorate.

If the inclinations of the low number of voters who turned out for the primary reflected the general election's voter's propensities, then the low number of primary voters would not have caused any problems, but because of apathy and longer and longer more expensive campaigns, the only voters who turn out for primary elections tend to be the people furthest from the idealogical center.

So what actually happens is that the Democratic primary is a primary disproportionately influenced by Liberals (or Progressives) and the Republican Primary is similarly disproportionately influenced by Conservatives. The result of both scenarios? The effective shutting out of the moderate views and voices of both parties. This is often referred to as “primaries controlled by the fringe element.”

Some states don't allow Independents to vote in primaries, while some states allow them to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary. Some states, allegedly to neutralize the fringe element voting of the primaries, allows Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary and vice versa so long as each voter only votes once.

But, cynically, Republicans will vote for the weaker Democratic primary candidate to make it easier for the Republican candidate in the general election to win as I am sure also happens in reverse. So, instead of diluting the affect of the fringes of each respective party, cross-party primaries may actually exacerbate the problem.

So today, Arlen Specter switched back to the Democratic Party. His reason was because he didn't think he could win his Republican Primary in Pennsylvania because right-wing conservative Republicans in the guise of Rick Santorum and Pat Twomey now make up a small but extremely focused part of the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.

Ultimately Senator Specter could not face the specter of being a 5 term incumbent Senator and losing to a more conservative primary challenger. He didn't want to happen to him, what Al D'Amato did almost 30 years ago to Jake Javits who was then in the throes of Lou Gehrig's disease.

Specter admitted as much, but he also claimed that the Republican party had moved away from him. I don't think that the true core Republican party has actually moved that much farther to the right than where it had been some years ago. I tend to think that the Republican people who make themselves heard create the cacophony of boisterous bluster that makes some believe that the rock-ribbed Republicans in the US electorate share the shrill venomous vitriole of their high-profile ‘talking heads’ who often talk nonsense. But, effectively, that is the same thing.

Yes, the GOP has moved to the right, but it seems more to the Right than it actual is because the ‘spokesmen’ for the party, GOP elected officials and the media from FOX, Clear-Channel, "talk radio" and Rupert Murdoch's newspaper empire all seem to parrot the same political Pablum while speaking with one voice.

The Democrats, being a party made up of people of nuance, don't channel each other. Barack Obama has been a major unifying force, or maybe it was the visceral reaction against George W. Bush that made President Bush the de facto unifying force of the Democrats. Regardless, I firmly believe that our system of primary elections has substantially contributed to the great rift between the parties, the loss of civility in political debate, and the large amount of polarization that confronts our nation; a polarization made more acute by the understandable reaction of most Americans to "turn off the obnoxious" when the talking-heads begin chattering.

I might have to plead guilty in advance. Some people will say, "Typical Democrat! Pinpoints a problem, but offers no solution." I plead "no contest" at best. I can not see reviving the system of bosses, although baldness and cigar smoking would not be as prevalent today. Outside of bribing people to vote in primaries or fining them for not voting, I see no way fast and easy out of the mess we are in.

Of course teaching civics from K through 12 might be a good start, but one party would probably never come up with the tax money to teach our children more about our system of Democracy. Because, ultimately, unlike New York retailer Sy Sims, when it comes to elections in the USA, an ‘educated consumer is NOT the politicians best customer.’