Specter move further weakens GOP

WASHINGTON (AP) — With Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democrats, the Republican Party is increasingly at risk of being viewed as a mostly Southern and solidly conservative party, an identity that might take years to overcome.

Specter’s move, which rocked Congress and the political world Tuesday, is the latest blow to Republicans, especially in the Northeast, once a GOP stronghold. The region’s Republicans now have been reduced to a scant presence in the House and a dwindling influence in the Senate.

But Specter’s defection has symbolic and immediate ramifications for the GOP nationwide. It makes it easier for Democrats, fairly or not, to paint the party as ideologically rigid and alien to large swaths of the country.

Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of the Senate’s few remaining moderate Republicans, called Specter’s decision another sign that her party must move toward the center.

“Ultimately, we’re heading to having the smallest political tent in history,” Snowe said. “If the Republican Party fully intends to become a majority party in the future, it must move from the far right back toward the middle.”

But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was defiant.

“I do not accept that we are going to be a regional party,” he said. “We’re working very hard to compete throughout the country.”

Specter’s departure follows recent Republican losses in once-reliable states. While Barack Obama was cruising to the White House last fall, Republicans were losing long-held Senate seats in Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia. A moderate Republican lost his seat in Oregon, and the same seems likely to happen when Minnesota’s long recount is settled.

In the House, Republicans have suffered deep losses in the last two elections, especially in the Northeast. Last week, Democrat Scott Murphy won a special election in a heavily Republican congressional district in upstate New York. Murphy will be sworn in today, giving Democrats 256 House seats to 178 for Republicans with one vacancy.

The congressional Republicans’ base is shrinking, leaving them with strongholds only in the South and parts of the mountain West.

With the departure of each centrist, including Pennsylvania’s Specter, the party also appears more firmly right-of-center. Polls show most Americans nearer the political center, and Democratic leaders were happy Tuesday to promote the GOP’s image as narrow-minded.

“This is now officially a Republican Party where moderates need not apply,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

Specter made similar remarks. “The Republican Party has moved farther and farther to the right,” he said, adding to the trend with his switch.

Specter accused party leaders of abandoning moderate Republicans in tough races, saying, “there ought to be an uprising.”