You get things done in the Senate by having seniority on committees. Specter especially enjoyed using his Appropriations subcommittee chairmanship to steer money to PA. Now that won’t be happening (he’ll still get some money for the state, just not the huge amount he has been accustomed to getting for the past decade or so). And being junior man on Judiciary is nothing compared to being chairman or ranking member.
The real work of the Senate is done in committees. You get power by being a chairman or ranking member of a committee or of a subcommittee. You can trade favors that way and include things in bills that you like. This is a huge blow to Specter. It deprives him of a significant portion of his clout. It also deprives him of a significant portion of his reason for being elected, since he runs as a guy who can get stuff done, not as a candidate who will advance an ideology.
Also, this deprives him of the ability to hire as much staff. The more senior you are on a committee the more money you have to hire folks. That’s a form of patronage and without that money he won’t have as many folks in PA saying, “Gee, I don’t always agree with Arlen, but he got my nephew Jimmy a job as a staff assistant for the Judiciary Committee. I guess he’s a good enough guy for me to vote for.” It’s a small factor but in a tight race, stuff like this certainly matters.
I don’t think there are going to be any other fence jumpers. There are really only two candidates anyway, and Snowe and Collins are both exceptionally popular. Specter did this because he was going to lose the primary, and there’s no chance that’ll happen to the others. If they did change parties, they would probably do so on better terms.
Setting aside my feelings on Specter entirely, this concept bothers me.
I’ve never been a big fan of seniority-based systems, but if you’ve got one, then it needs to be something consistent and clean. If you’ve been there for 30 years, you get 30 years of seniority. The concept of your peers voting to take that seniority away just seems wrong.
The part that bothers me is the “instilling party discipline” or “ensuring loyalty”. The Republican party is an excellent example of what happens when a party makes those a priority. I was hoping that the Democratic party would be smart enough to avoid those pitfalls.
Saw a clip of Wolf(enstein) Blitzer interviewing Harry Reid for tonight’s show, Reid said that he is ‘working’ with the committee chairmen on the issue. My WAG is Specter keeps seniority on the appropriations committee but goes to back of the line on the judicial committee.
Also, Specter is back pedaling hard from his Coleman comments.
Seniority only matters within parties. It’s not like the committee chairmanships are divvied up based on who the most senior Senator is, regardless of party. Seniority only counts within the party caucus. The party caucus then determines who gets seats on the committees.
For Specter to all of a sudden get senior positions on these committees means that other Democrats are pushed aside. Senators who have been waiting for years to get these powerful chairmanships would all of a sudden be told that, sorry, Specter’s getting it. It’s not really a good way to engender loyalty in your caucus when you do that.
The Dems got this exactly right in my estimation. Specter has not proven himself to be a member of the Democratic caucus yet. There will be a significant number of votes in this session in which he can prove that. If he does, he will get his seniority back in the next organizing resolution - if not then he won’t. He didn’t get elected as a Democrat, so I don’t think any Republican seniority should necessarily count - if he proves he can get elected as a Democrat (which will probably require taking at least a slightly more liberal line than he in the past) then that seniority can be reinstated.
They also attempted to use the committee seats as leverage with the Republicans to get Franken seated. The Republican leadership refused to play ball so now all committees that Specter sits on have larger Democratic majorities (including Judiciary and Appropriations).
Absolutely, and one of the reasons I think this is a net win for the Dems. If Arlen wants his seniority back on the Judiciary he really needs to do his part to help push through Obama’s nominations. And since the Republicans refused to back down on Coleman’s continued legal appeals they have less clout in that committee then they might have otherwise - they Democrats have a 5-seat majority on that committee now.
Not necessarily, if Specter maintains his voting independence as he claims he will do. It he casts the same vote as he would as a Republican, it doesn’t matter if he changes parties or not – until the next election rolls around.
As junior member of the committee, though, wouldn’t he have less power to raise a fuss over a nominee he doesn’t like? I don’t know where he would have stacked up if he’d retained seniority, but he would have been near the top.
Specter is apparently now whining in public that he was promised he would retain seniority. Probably they’ll work out a compromise for him, for Obama’s sake if not for Reid’s. But in the meantime Specter has to be embarrassed at how this has played out and the blow it could deal to his reelection chances.
As one of Specter’s constituents, I’m perfectly fine with him (and us, by extension) taking a hit on seniority. I like the idea of making him at least vote like a Democrat for a while before giving him privileges. He may have 29 years as a Republican lawmaker, but he ain’t got crap as a Democrat. Prove yourself, Arlen!
In the White House, President Obama is watching Arlen Specter speak live on CNN, when he slaps his right trouser pocket with an open handed “whap!”. Senator Specter gives forth a soprano screech of pain and doubles over…
Michelle wags a scolding finger at the President “Now, Barry, you stop that this instant! OK, pretty soon! And not in front of the children unless *you’re *going to explain it to them!”
If only it’s going to be that easy for the president to keep Specter in line. The one saving grace is that Specter can’t possibly be delusional enough to think that if he stabs his new party in the back in the remaining votes of this session that he’ll actually get that uncontested primary he’s hoping for. There are already plenty of people trying to organize a grassroots primary challenge to him, since the official nod is already nominally in the bag.
Message to my boss Fast Eddie and the DC Dems: YOU don’t get to decide whether or not there’s a primary in my state.
As the chair, I think he has some power to control the question time. He may potentially have the ability to “bottle up” a nominee and prevent the full Senate from considering a candidate, but he is supposed to do that in a manner of channeling the party leadership’s consensus to rally his fellow party member to vote his way. I don’t believe that he, as a lone gunman so to say, could prevent a nomination from going to the floor unless he had the votes of the other Dems on the committee.
YMMV, of course, depending on which end of the political spectrum you’re observing from, but Specter is FAR from having a history of voting like a Democrat. Like a very moderate Republican, perhaps, but like a Democrat? No fucking way.