When you've double-crossed everyone, when you've alienated the right and the left, when there's nowhere left to go for support . . . you stand alone. And standing alone doesn't win Senate elections.
Fresh from burning all bridges with his long-suffering supporters in organized labor -- who stuck with him through many, many uncomfortable circumstances because of his relative reliability on workplace issues -- Alone Arlen now faces a bloodthirsty GOP primary electorate that he probably can't buy off with a late flip-flop on Employee Free Choice. The numbers are ugly:
Apparently paying a political price for his support of President Barack Obama's Stimulus Plan, longtime Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter trails former Congressman Pat Toomey 41 - 27 percent in a Republican primary for the 2010 Senate race, with 28 percent undecided, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
Overall Pennsylvania voters have a 45 - 31 percent favorable opinion of Sen. Specter, but he gets a 47 - 29 percent unfavorable score from Republicans. The Republican gets a 60 - 16 percent thumbs up from Democrats and a 41 - 35 percent positive from independent voters, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. Even though Toomey lost the 2004 Republican primary to Specter by less than two points, 78 percent of all voters, including 73 percent of Republicans, don't know enough about him to form an opinion.
Moreover, the wingnut gatekeepers aren't appeased by Arlen's deathbed conversion on labor rights:
For instance, Specter’s announcement drew only mockery and scorn from former GOP Rep. Ernest Istook, the chair of the anti-EFCA group Save Our Secret Ballot.
“Specter enjoys being the center of attention,” Istook said. “There has probably been more money spent to influence his vote on this issue than on any other vote, from any other senator, at any other time. He wants to continue enjoying the attention and the fundraising opportunity.”
Doug Stafford of the anti-EFCA National Right to Work Committee added in a statement that Specter’s move should be “viewed with some skepticism,” adding that other labor-oriented proposals championed by Specter remain “totally unacceptable” and will enable “Big Labor to corral more workers into forced unionism.”
Specter’s potential primary challenger, Club for Growth president Pat Toomey, has kept up the attacks, blasting Specter’s vote for the “big government stimulus bill” and dismissing Specter’s opposition to EFCA as merely the result of “a threat in the Republican primary.”
He spurned the Democrats, and the Republicans don't want him back. His only chance of winning as an independent depended on pulling off labor support as a base, and he pissed that hope away yesterday, when he pissed on workers' rights. Arlen Specter may be running for reelection, but he's a dead man running.