Below The Beltway

It won’t be officially announced until later today, but Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter has switched parties:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Veteran Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter told colleagues Tuesday that he switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party, Sen. Harry Reid says.

The Specter party switch would give Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate majority of 60 seats if Al Franken holds his current lead in the disputed Minnesota Senate race.

“Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right,” Specter said in a statement posted by his office on PoliticsPA.com.

“Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.”

Specter, a five-term Senate veteran, was greeted by a loud, sustained round of applause by dozens of constituents outside his Washington office shortly after the news broke.

“I don’t have to say anything to them,” a smiling Specter said. “They’ve said it to me.”

This comes less than a week after a Rasmussen poll that showed Specter badly trailing Pat Toomey and after months of speculation that began with rumors that MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was considering entering the Democratic Primary to challenge Specter in 2010 and reached new levels when Specter voted in favor of President Obama’s stimulus bill in February.

Morever, this switch shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The possibility of a party switch was being discussed back in March, along with the rumor that Specter might run as an Independent to avoid a primary fight with Toomey.

My guess is that we’ll learn that these discussions have been going on for months, and that the one thing Specter got from Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats is a guarantee that he won’t have an opponent for the Democratic nomination in 2010, and that the party will put it’s full support behind him.

As you might expect, reaction to this story on the right is pretty predictable. Michelle Malkin called Specter the head of the “Turncoat Caucus”, for example. Other conservatives aren’t celebrating, though, Philip Klein had this to say at the American Spectator:

This is a huge blow for Republicans hoping to stop Obama’s agenda in the Senate. Specter had been moving to the right on issues such as card check because he was concerned about the challenge from Toomey, but if he’s facing a tough battle against a liberal opponent in the Democratic primary, the opposite dynamic comes into play and he’s likely to move even further to the left. The only way he’ll get the Democratic nod is if he reliably votes with the administration.

And that is probably the price Specter agreed to pay as part of this deal, although I’m willing to bet, as I noted above, that he will not face serious opposition for the Democratic nomination.

In the short run, this is bad news for the GOP because it makes it that much harder to stop the President’s agenda on issues like the budget and health care. In the long run, it’s bad news for the GOP because it is makes it that much less likely that they’ll be able to re-take the Senate any time in the next ten years.