Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Arlen Specter/More Teleprompter Problems

Elli Ganchrow writes:

The news that Senator Spector is leaving the Republican party is obviously a big blow to the Republicans chances of slowing down the Obama agenda, but for all intents and purposes, Specter had left the party when he voted with Obama on his "stimulus" package. This move by Specter at least removes one of the most prominent RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) which the media enjoyed using when they wanted to show that certain Republicans were willing to go along with certain aspects of the Democrats agenda. Specter came to the realization that he was going to be blown out by Pat Toomey in the upcoming Republican primary for Specter's seat (the last polls showed Toomey up by 20 points) and decided to jump ship when he could- not exactly a portrait of courage. A few additional points: 1. Specter announced that he would not change his vote on Card Check which probably means that piece of legislation will be stalled 2. It will be interesting to see if anyone steps to challenge Specter in the Democratic primary 3. The general election race of Toomey versus Specter (a rematch of the Republican primary race) should be one of the most-watched races of the cycle. One further point: I believe those Republicans which helped Specter barely Toomey in 2004 owe the party an apology for giving us these last 6 years of Specter in the Senate.

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As has been pointed out in previous posts, Obama's over-reliance on teleprompters has reached the point of absurity. Another flub by Obama over the weekend (http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0409/obama_gets_ahead_of_prompter_3813cbcb-1e4a-44c6-b1e7-26017e7b70c2.html again exposes Obama's weakness in his ability to improvise on his feet. Of course, if President Bush had made a mistake such as this one, it would be all over the late night shows, as well as Jon Stewart.