Frankly, I'd rather that they didn't figure out that within that great big tent of ours is a little Free-French version of the Republican Party — a kind of "Republican-in-exile" party. It’s a bit like the days of Solidarity! in Poland when confirmed atheists sat and read the paper in churches during mass, because the Church was the lesser of two evils and the "enemy of my enemy is my friend." Specter's leaving may get the saner Republicans (like Steele) to lift up the side of the tent and look inside. They're pretty good chicken thieves too....
Over time, everything shifts left. That’s American history. That’s why it’s called "progressive." Jefferson owned slaves. Even Republicans. The current state of the party is unstable and untenable, and Specter leaving might just be pouring bleach into the ammonia.
It’s a natural process in which either 1) the Republican Party completes its "ethnic cleansing" and winds up with a bunch of Bunning/Bachman fruitcakes, neo-Nazis and unreconstructed Dixiecrats, which competes with the Socialist Party and Ross Perot for votes; or 2) Mr. Steele is successful and they drop the way-superannuated culture wars and wind up stealing Blue Dogs from the Dems and re-forming as something like a 50-state American party.
That second scenario really scares me. There is real actual party line there, that runs along the faults in the American nation.
Running on a platform which attempts to dismantle the New Deal isn’t selling now, Republicans really always will want to take Social Security, Medicare, the EPA and the NSF away from Americans. But honestly, how stupid are these Boners? They ARE gonna get it, one of these days, and then people like me won’t be so happy.