WASHINGTON — Thursday marks one year since Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter announced he was becoming a Democrat, leaving the Republican Party and a potentially tough 2010 Pennsylvania GOP primary election in his rearview mirror. One year after his decision, Specter finds himself under fire from both sides; a Democratic primary challenge from his left by Rep. Joe Sestak, D \u2013Pa., as well as incessant attacks from the GOP.<\/p>\n
In remarks to be delivered Thursday evening in Washington, Sestak will hit on his opponent\u2019s change of heart last year, “A year ago today, Senator Specter, after 44 years as a Republican, left his party. He made his reasons very clear. He said he joined our party because his chances of winning re-election as a Republican were “bleak.”<\/p>\n
The Pennsylvania congressman is also accusing Specter of spreading mistruths in their recent TV ad, which claims Sestak was \u201crelieved of duty in the navy for creating a poor command climate\u201d. \u201cI retired because my daughter had a brain tumor…\u201d Sestak told Fox News today, \u201cthis is what\u2019s wrong with politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0Meanwhile, conservative Republican Pat Toomey waits to see which Democrat he\u2019ll be running against in the fall, but that hasn\u2019t stopped his campaign from chiming in, especially on this occasion. \u201cOver the past year, Arlen Specter has proven time and again that the only principle that matters to him is the preservation of his own political career,\u201d Toomey Communications Director Nachama Soloveichik said. \u201cHe has changed his position on nearly every issue, from health care, to card check, to national security.\u201d<\/p>\n
Specter\u2019s campaign fired right back at the Toomey campaign\u2019s criticism, \u201cPat Toomey is the original Mr. No of Pennsylvania politics and far outside the mainstream here, \u201d said Specter Campaign Manager Christopher Nicholas.<\/p>\n
On the Senate floor Thursday, Specter attempted to stay above the fray, \u201cThe stakes for America require that we all do our level best and permit the public to judge us accordingly\u2026 there is a pressing need for Republicans to join with us in reforming Wall Street, to prevent the kind of financial crisis which cost this country eight million jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Specter staffers however found themselves doing a bit of cleanup Thursday, with multiple news outlets filing on the following Specter quote: ”Well, I probably shouldn’t say this,”[Specter] said over lunch last month. ”But I have thought from time to time that I might have helped the country more if I’d stayed a Republican.”<\/p>\n
Mr. Nicholas responded by emailing out what he characterized as the entire quote, for context:<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I probably shouldn\u2019t say this, but I have thought from time to time that I might have helped the country more if I\u2019d stayed Republican and tried to bring people across the aisle on healthcare. I might have brought a few across the aisle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON — Thursday marks one year since Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter announced he was becoming a Democrat, leaving the Republican Party and a potentially tough 2010 Pennsylvania GOP primary election in his rearview mirror. One year after his decision, Specter finds himself under fire from both sides; a Democratic primary challenge from his left by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4535,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4535"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}