As David Waldman notes at Daily Kos, the Democrats decided to deny Arlen Specter his seniority for the remainder of this Congress. If he gets reelected in 2010, his seniority will be restored, making him eligible to chair high-level subcommittees on Judiciary and Appropriations (and possibly become chairman of the full Judiciary Committee if Leahy moves to chair Appropriations, or become the chairman of Environment & Public Works). But Specter has at least two checks on him. First, he must please the Democratic Caucus enough over the remainder of this Congress for them to agree to give him a chair and second, he must win over the Democratic Primary voters in Pennsylvania and then win the general election. If he can do all that, then he’ll be considered a Democrat in good standing and get full seniority.
But double-crossing Specter and denying him his seniority is only one part of how the Democrats showed their muscle. The Senate is organized by a resolution that was passed back in January. That resolution set the ratios on all the committees and it also set the chairman and ranking member for each committee. Unless the Republicans were willing to revisit that resolution, Specter would have remained the ranking member on Judiciary. The Republican didn’t want that, but they also didn’t want to seat Al Franken, which could have been forced on them if they reopened the organizing resolution. So, they agreed to a minor change…simply flipping Specter on all his committees without any compensation. This means that the ratio of Democrats to Republicans on Appropriations, Judiciary, Environment & Public Works, Aging, and Veteran’s Affairs just shifted by two in the Democrats’ favor. In other words, the Republicans made a decision that they would rather lose five committee seats than make any room for Al Franken.
That’s some pretty serious short-term thinking. But the lesson is that you can’t write a book called Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot and have the Republicans treat you with any due deference or respect.