J. D. Prose – 2/25/09

This page was last updated on March 1, 2009.

No shortage of takers for jury commissioner jobs; J. D. Prose; Beaver County Times; February 25, 2009.

As you read this opinion column, keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the Times. Mr. Prose is also a reporter covering political stories. Ask yourself this. When a pundit gives his political opinions in one part of the paper, can he be trusted to report politics objectively elsewhere in the paper? After all, would a person whose opinion is 1+1 equals 3 report 1+1 really equals 2?

Rather than subject you to the whole column, I’ll focus on the relevant section in “Seen & heard.”

“A Quinnipiac University poll shows that 43 percent of state voters don’t think stimulus supporter/moderate Republican U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, who’s become the whipping boy for right-wingers, deserves to be re-elected, while 40 percent said he deserves another six-year term. Specter got an earful from anti-stimulus folks in Ellwood City and Cranberry Township last week. Here’s more ammo for all those Specter-hating Republicans: He had a 62 percent approval rating among Democrats and a 55 percent rating among GOPers in the poll, and the Service Employees International Union has been running TV ads thanking Specter for supporting the stimulus package.”

[RWC] Mr. Prose seems to assume all the “anti-stimulus folks in Ellwood City and Cranberry Township last week” were “Specter-hating Republicans.” I hate to break the news, but a lot of Democrats I heard bash President Bush on a regular basis aren’t happy with the spending bill either. Then again, perhaps that’s because they’re racists as Mr. Prose claimed previously.

As for Mr. Specter’s alleged “55 percent rating among GOPers in the poll,” that’s better than he did in the 2004 primary. See the details below.

“Think any of that will come up during the 2010 GOP primary? Neither do we.”

[RWC] Apparently Mr. Prose forgot about or didn’t pay attention during the 2004 GOP primary when Rep. Pat Toomey ran against Mr. Specter. Mr. Specter’s relationship with the left is usually at issue during the primary. As a reminder, Mr. Specter has an American Conservative Union lifetime voting record of 45%. During the GOP primary season, however, Mr. Specter tries to convince Republicans he’s really a conservative.

Let’s go back to the 2004 primary. With alleged support from the Specter campaign, Transportation Communications International Union management sent Pennsylvania union members a letter encouraging Democrats to switch temporarily their party registration so they could vote in the Republican primary. Union management wants Sen. Specter to defeat Rep. Pat Toomey. Union management wanted to make sure that if a Democrat didn’t win the Senate seat in the general election, the liberal Sen. Specter would.

This wasn’t the only attempt by Mr. Specter to use this tactic to subvert the will of Pennsylvania Republicans. Sen. Specter also encouraged Jewish Democrats to switch registration so they could vote for him in the primary!

So how did Mr. Specter win the 2004 Republican nomination over a Republican with a proven conservative voting record (97% ACU rating)? President Bush and Sen. Rick Santorum, following the strategy of blindly supporting the incumbent, supported Mr. Specter over Mr. Toomey. Even so, Mr. Specter won by only 50.8% to 49.2% (17,143 votes out of just over one million votes).