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What you fail to realize is that Arlen Specter is Senator #60. We were 3rd and 1 and now we've got a first down.
Al Franken, Senator #59, gets you nothing without Arlen Specter, Senator #60 - no health care reform, no alternative energy, nothing but gridlock for the next two years while the Republicans try to run out the clock on us and then blame us for getting nothing done.
There are a lot of moderate Republicans in the world like Specter or Olympia Snowe or a number of others who no longer feel at home in the radical lock step world of the Rush Limbaugh/Karl Rove Republican Party. Governor Cristy Todd Whitman even wrote a book after she resigned from George W. Bush's administration as EPA secretary called "It's My Party Too".
Tolerance is supposedly a Democratic (both big and little D) virtue.
We claim to be the party that is tolerant of other people's beliefs yet all too often I see posts like this which attack someone who has admitted his own party is too crazy and has come over to our side however reluctantly. I frankly don't care if Arlen Specter isn't 100% on our side all the time. I honestly don't expect him to march in lockstep.
Thats OK.
I don't expect Democratic Senator Bill Nelson here in Florida to agree with me 100% of the time either but if I FINALLY after 28 years of the Reagan "Revolution" and particularly after 8 years of BushCo and after 5 years of my own sweat, hard work and money have a real opportunity to advance key portions of the Democratic agenda and see them passed and have a chance to take hold of the public's imagination and grow some roots so that they are hard to pull up later, I'll gladly take what I can get until 2010 comes along and who knows what we'll get then so let's take what we can get now and do what we can now while we have a better opportunity later.
Carpe Diem.
Politics is about the art of the possible - the art of compromise - not about throwing rocks and making the perfect the enemy of the better.
Earlier this year as a member of our local Move-On delegation, I was the spokesman at meetings between Move On and the regional directors for Senators Nelson (D) and Martinez (R) here in Florida to push President Obama's economic recovery agenda in Congress and also relayed that message to Congressman Grayson's office as well.
I could have gone into these meetings in a confrontational take no prisoners style but that would have been counter productive - with the Democrats it would have been a case of not "taking yes for an answer" and being disrespectful to friends and allies who were already on our side.
In the case of Republican Senator Martinez, it would have only served to reinforce Republican stereotypes of MoveOn as a confrontational group that was out to get them and hardened their stance when what I - what Obama really needed - was Senator #60.
I was hoping to make Senator Martinez Senator #60 - and the best way to do that was to ask them what exactly he was looking for in order to stand with Obama instead of Mitch McConnell and friends.
Martinez' big issue was (as a former HUD secretary) finding a way to keep people in their homes.
Ultimately we didn't get Martinez' support but it was well worth the try to find out what he wanted and to treat his office with some civility and some courtesy and to try to see what kind of compromise was possible.
It is hard sometimes to pull your punches and to be civil to Republicans after the last 8 years but you have to remember that they truly aren't a monolithic group regardless of what their leadership thinks - there are religious conservatives, small government libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and moderates who used to not feel comfortable with the Democratic Party and who now do not feel comfortable in either party.
We should be courting these moderate Republicans if we want to really lock up control of the Senate and Congress - especially if the Republican leadership is hell bent on "purifying" their party and driving these moderates out anyways. If they think the problem with their party is that it isn't "conservative enough" we ought to be all too happy to help them out.
If moderates leave the Republican Party in droves the uber conservatives left in the GOP will quickly end up about as politically effective as the John Birch Society because ordinary middle of the road voters will then brand the GOP as intolerant crazies.
This has already largely happened already given that the GOP approval rating is now down to 21%. If they "purge" the GOP moderates and we welcome them into our fold then that number will quickly go down to 10% as we get things passed that actually help real voters and the remnants of the GOP look crazy, ineffective, petulant, and obstructionist. Who knows who else they might send running from their party screaming like their hair was on fire? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Charlie Crist? Olympia Snowe?
As someone who has lived in the Deep South for much of his life but who has lived and traveled a lot of places, heed my advice on this - if you want to cause the total disintegration of the Republican Party, give GOP moderates a place to go and be accepted. Accept that you aren't going to agree with them a good part of the time but that you will be willing to tolerate moderate (not conservative) points of view and be civil and reasonable towards them.
If you do this you will win them over and you will actually take away the biggest weapon (lie) that conservatives try to use against us, i.e. that liberals are extremists out to take away their liberty, their property, their individualism, etc.
If you act politely, reasonably, and patiently and know how to not take the bait when GOP talking points are used - if you try to understand (not agree but understand) what they are about, if you listen to their point of view and be civil about it without sacrificing your principles you will find that many moderate and even some conservative Republicans defenses will crumble and you will find that they will be persuadable with reason and fact.
I've been very successful with this strategy over the years and earned the respect of quite a few conservatives who thought they understood what it meant to be a "Democrat" but ultimately came away with more respect for Democrats after discussing politics with me enough times.
Let's be clear: We're not going to agree with Arlen on a lot of stuff - but if you really want health care reform, he's going to be Senator #60 who will make that happen - THIS YEAR.
Before you bash him some more think about whether you'd rather have the immediate childish emotional gratification of that bashing or you'd rather finally have the satisfaction and sense of achievement in living a country that treats health care as a universal right of all Americans rather than a commodity that only the rich can afford.
Doug D.
Orlando, FL
PS: As for the remainder of the GOP coalition:
a) you can best disarm religious conservatives by quoting Matthew to them, you know showing how Jesus was for free health care, against school prayer, against capital punishment and didn't mind paying his taxes, etc., etc. Really fun to play with fundy minds that way...
b) you can best disarm the fiscal conservative/business types by showing how the Republicans are borrow and spenders instead of tax and spenders and that borrow and spend is far worse because you eventually have to pay it back with interest.
c) you can best disarm the libertarian types by bringing their attention to Bush's big brother crazy totalitarianism gov't with illegal wire taps, the PATRIOT act, etc, etc.
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