Specter’s move to the Democratic party seems to me to be the nail in the coffin of the Republican Party. When you look back at the events surrounding the selection of Abraham Lincoln as the Republican candidate for presidency, what you see is a knitting together of the party itself from various dissenting parties, some abolitionist, some north-leaning Democrats, some border state personalities, and mostly Whigs. When you look at the events of today, with Republicans losing elections previously thought safe, with individuals beginning to leave the party, and with the further concentration of hard-Right positions in those who still exist in the Congress, there is only one reasonable conclusion to draw. The Republican party is breaking up as the Whigs did.
I hear pundits dismiss this notion often, and I will be curious to see if that still happens. This doesn’t look like the normal bloodletting that happens after a major party shift in the Congress and Executive. This looks like self-destruction. The party is getting more concentrated and brittle, and they are chipping away what little they have left on trying to impede Obama at every turn.
I have said this before, and it bears writing down here. The opposition party has an important role in providing a check on power. The opposition party does not fulfill that role, however, when every act is one of impedance. The Republican party has acted like Cato the Younger since Obama took office, endlessly filibustering until work must be put off another day. Cato made a reputation opposing Caesar. Perhaps Republicans should be reminded of how messily that ended up for Cato.
Dac Nelson 