Why Sen. Arlen Specter left the Republican Party

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA, a former Republican)

Sen. Arlen Specter is hosting a press conference right now about his decision to leave the Republican Party. He’s going to be joining the Democrats. According to the him, Democrats have been trying to court him for over 5 years. This would make sense since he won the Republican primary 5 years ago with a razor thin margin and coasted to a general election victory. Given Specter’s decision to side with President Obama and a whole slew of issues, his primary victory was certainly looking challenging. Sen. Specter actually cited a few Republican Congressmen (like Wayne Gilchrist, Joe Schwartz, Heather Wilson, Link Chaffy) who were either beaten by conservative Republicans and whose seats were lost in the general election or who were wounded by a divisive primary and were hurt in the general election.

Sen. Specter was a lose-lose case for the Republican Party. Had he lost his party’s primary (which was very likely), Republicans would have almost certainly lost that seat to any generic Democrat. Had he won the primary, they would have been either stuck with a fairly liberal Republican for a Senator or would have ended up with a Democrat assuming that Specter’s possible campaign as a conservative would have hurt him in the general election.