Arlen Specter Syndrome Could Spread Like a Republican Flu

The recent news that epidemiologists had traced the origins of the swine flu to a single boy in Mexico meant they'd located "patient zero," an important step in tracing a disease that may be headed toward being a pandemic.

A similar phenomenon happened in Washington when Republican Sen. Arlen Specter announced he'd be switching to the Democratic Party. A pandemic of sorts is facing the Republicans, a viral epidemic spreading through populations across large regions. It's been contagious in Pennsylvania over the past decade. Last year alone, more than 200,000 Republicans there became Democrats, according to the Senate's "patient zero." One recent survey found that a majority of Keystone Staters had belonged to the GOP for more than 20 years; more than half of those who left said the Republican Party had become too extreme.

Maybe what Specter saw happening in his state is an important step in tracing the pandemic affecting the GOP. Specter had a particular strain of a larger problem for Republicans, one that is spreading quickly. We've seen the symptoms on the news: a fever pitch, difficulty breathing and staying calm, a sense of being squeezed.

What the senator called "irreconcilable" differences lie between the GOP's two wings.

On one hand are those who worry about President Obama's massive federal expansion and the trillions of dollars in debt we're transferring to our kids. These deficit hawks are mostly limited-government moderates and conservatives who don't want the government involved in every facet of their lives. They believe that charity organizations, the market, and the government working together will solve problems, and they oppose a huge, across-the-board shift to the public sector. Socially, they believe in a live-and-let-live, almost libertarian philosophy that holds that what one does as a property owner, parent, or law-abiding citizen isn't anyone else's business, especially not the government's. Their message is, as Gerald Ford once said, "A government big enough to give you everything you need is big enough to take away everything you have."

On the other hand are the social conservatives, mostly rank-and-file party members who are increasingly angry about taxes, yes, but also abortion, immigration, and the new litmus test, gay marriage. They have a term of art, RINO, or "Republican in Name Only," for those who do not place what they see as family values issues at the heart of the conservative credo. They are very concerned with the state of morality in public life and think government can be a force for maintaining decency and standards. Social conservatives believe strongly in ideological purity and in getting "back to basics," and they resent what they view as slippery-slope backsliding on cultural issues, from stem cell research to global warming to gun control. They're not particularly interested in compromising with liberals or moderates. As Sen. Olympia Snowe told the Washington Post, their message is, "Either you're with us, or you're against us."

And while many of the right's big thinkers say that the party's future lies in a mix of fiscal and social conservatism, that the two are not mutually exclusive, it sure looks as if the two sides are becoming just that. Neither feels welcomed by the other. There is just too much extremism. For example: Try to reconcile rising-tide-lifts-all-boats, pro-growth Republicanism with the anti-immigrant policies so popular with the rural base. Or contrast the "party of Lincoln" rhetoric that espouses opportunity and fair treatment for all Americans with the closed-minded attitude many social conservatives have toward homosexual rights. It's too big a stretch to reconcile both sides. As Specter said, "Sometimes party asks too much."

In response to Specter's statement that the GOP has moved too far to the right, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele said, "Senator Specter didn't leave the GOP based on principles of any kind." Karl Rove, the Bush political guru, snipped, "This is driven by one thing and one thing only: his lousy poll numbers." Others were quoted calling him everything from an "opportunist" to a "snake." What people don't seem to realize is that there may be many more Arlen Specters out there. They are, in medical parlance, the "worried well"—rational, healthy people who wonder if they'll be next. Both Snowe and Maine's other Republican senator, Susan Collins, said they'd been approached about switching parties, too. 

And so Specter has become the latest casualty of the Republican policy pandemic. GOP numbers are dwindling. A Washington Post-ABC News poll put the number of self-identified Republicans at only 21 percent of the electorate; a few more, but only 38 percent, called themselves conservative. That's a long way from the winning majority President Obama calls "50 plus one." I had a fellow Washington-area mom tell me recently that she thinks the GOP is antiblack, antigay, antiwomen, "the party of the KKK." If that's what reasonable suburban housewives think about the GOP, it's a fatal problem. Good luck getting to "50 plus one" with that.

Newt Gingrich said in February that if Republicans didn't "break out of being the right-wing party of big government," there would be a third-party movement in 2012. I wondered then if that was a threat or a promise.

Today, it seems many hope it was a promise—and want to know where to sign up. Pennsylvania's "patient zero" may well have been the starting point for what soon becomes viral among many, many more Republicans.