Now here’s an interesting spin on the Arlen Specter switch. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) appeared on Fox News today, where he presented the case that Specter’s switch is the first evidence that people are rebelling against Obama, and that the Republican Party is coming back!
Inhofe explained that this was a sign that Obama and the Democrats were overreaching, just as Bill Clinton did in 1993, and the people are rebelling against it just as they did in 1994:
“Now the evidence of this was found out when Arlen Specter made his decision,” Inhofe explained. “And that is all of a sudden, we find out that Arlen Specter is down in the Republican Party, down in terms of his popularity. The guy that ran against him and was defeated by Arlen Specter in, six years ago, now is so far ahead of him that Arlen Specter’s own advisers said there’s no way that you can win this thing unless you change to the Democratic Party. Now to me, that’s the evidence it’s coming.”
Inhofe appears to be thinking here that the state of opinion in the Republican Party is tantamount to the nation’s opinion overall. This might be true enough if it’s just applied to his home state of Oklahoma. But as we’ve learned in 2006, 2008 and recent months, this doesn’t exactly apply to the whole country.
