"Ken Fortenberry" wrote in message
...
I don't know about this being a non-event. The threat of a filibuster
has always been more important than the actual filibuster. When
Franken is seated there will be one less arrow in the GOP's political
quiver.

actually, Ken, I don't think Specter's defection affects the chances of a
filibuster on many issues at all. What it DOES do, however, is open the
gates for the defection of moderate Republicans, most especially in the
Northeast and Northwest of the nation. Take, for example, Collins and Snowe
in Maine. It will take very little of the conservative party-line BS like
that issued today by Steele and McConnell to push either or both of those
Senators into the D column. Not to mention, a host of elected officials
nationwide. Moderate Republicans, like Specter, have been harassed,
challenged and basically humiliated, politically, by an over-aggressive
right wing orthodoxy in the GOP for a while now. For Specter, it was a case
of payback is a bitch....and, while paying back, he kicked the Grand Old
Party in the nuts on the way out the door.
Good for him.
Tom