Conservative Reaction to Specter

The Corner have longtime bashed Arlen Specter. Michael Rubin was angered by Specter's advocacy of diplomacy with Iran.

If ever the Republicans had a Jimmy Carter, Arlen Specter is it.

Kathryn Jean Lopez did muchraking reporting by using her anonymous wealthy friend as a source. K-Lo's thesis was Specter's vote for the stimulus package would help Pat Toomey's campaign contributions. The Corner repeatedly hammered Specter's postion on abortion. The Corner has repeatedly stressed for Specter's exit and less government. With Specter, Democrats have 60 seats once Al Franken is seated. The Corner is not happy about Republicans having less government.

I read that he was switching parties, but I was disappointed to learn he's still a Democrat.

The DINO remark is funny. Did the Cornerites expect Specter to join Bernie Sander's Vermont Progressive Party? Seriously.

In related news: RNC chairman Michael Steele told CNN he did not know Specter was going to defect.

Steele: Cornyn went out on the line for this man. For the senator to flip the bird back to Senator Cornyn and the Republican Senate Leadership, a team that stood by him, who went to the bat for him in 2004, to save his hide is not only disrespectful but down right rude. I'm sure his mama didn't raise him this way.


Q: Did he give you a heads up on this?

Steele: No, not at all. Which is another form of this respect that I don't count. At least give me a call or give the party leadership a call and let us know this is what I'm thinking. This is where I'm going so you can be prepared. I'm not one to be caught flat-footed about these things.

Oh really! Steele explains to CNN that he didn't know Specter's plans and then declares he doesn't get flat-footed. Steele is a comedy quote machine.

Steele declares, "Get ready to go to the mat, baby, because we're coming after you and taking you out." Will Steele be RNC chair in 2010?

Michelle Malkin goes nuclear. Specter is finally leaving the GOP and she is pissed? Malkin hates Specter. Yet Malkin is pissed. This is a seriously conflicted conservative blogger?

I am not a Specter fan. I agree that Specter's motivation is political survival. Republicans have bashed Specter for years and and are shocked he joined the opposition. Democrats went through this with Joe Lieberman. The base backed Ned Lamont and ended up stuck with Lieberman in the caucas. Republicans don't have a backup plan. Specter isn't likely to rejoin the GOP. Obama will campaign and raise money for Specter in the general election. Conservative principles don't mean much if you can't govern.

Meet Rudy's Unfriendly Friends

Meet Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy advisors.

Mr. Giuliani’s team includes Norman Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative who advocates bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible”; Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinizing American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps; and Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written in favor of revoking the United States’ ban on assassination.

These guys are like Dick Cheney with a shotgun. Someone is eventually bound to get shot with these warmongers around.

Podhoretz is a longtime member of the neoconservative movement. This is is full statement on why he wants to bomb Iraq.

“Well, if we were to bomb the Iranians as I hope and pray we will. We’ll unleash a wave of anti-Americanism all over the world that will make the anti-Americanism we’ve experienced so far look like a lovefest.”

Podhoretz prays that America will bomb Iraq. Think about the madness of that statement.



Michael Rubin was adviser on Iran and Iraq for Donald Rumsfeld. That alone should disqualify him from future public service. He will most likely serve in a Giuliani administration.

Daniel Pipes is against the Khalil Gibran International Academy being allowed to teach the Ababic language in Brooklyn. His reasoning is that the school will become a breeding ground for terrorism. His blog post is filled with faux-intellectual xenophobia. Which is what drives the neocon movement. It certainly isn't logic or reason.

Also, learning Arabic in and of itself promotes an Islamic outlook, as James Coffman showed in 1995, looking at evidence from Algeria. Comparing students taught in French and in Arabic, he found that "Arabized students show decidedly greater support for the Islamist movement and greater mistrust of the West." Those Arabized students, he notes, more readily believed in "the infiltration into Algeria of Israeli women spies infected with AIDS … the mass conversion to Islam by millions of Americans," and other Islamist nonsense.

Pipes can not put his head around that America isn't Algeria. The United States is a democracy that does not have the social and economical problems of a third world nation. If this school really is a hotbed for terrorism the FBI would shut it down in a minute. It most likely already is being monitored by the feds.

No one should be surprised by Rudy's choice of advisors. He believe torture depends on which country performs the heinous acts.