{"id":2286,"date":"2009-04-28T20:18:22","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T20:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2286"},"modified":"2009-04-28T20:18:22","modified_gmt":"2009-04-28T20:18:22","slug":"into_the_fold_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2286","title":{"rendered":"Into The Fold"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=103570155\">Senator Specter&#8217;s switch to the Democratic Party<\/a> is as much about political realignments as it is about Specter&#8217;s own desire to remain in power. The era of the Northeast moderate Republican is effectively over. Pennsylvania, along with the rest of the region, has been trending blue for a long time. And the minority who identify as Republicans are becoming ever more conservative. Specter knew that electoral prospects in a contested primary for a middle-of-the-roader like himself were increasingly dim, so switching parties vastly improves his chances for being reelected. And it&#8217;s probably easier to be the dissenting moderate voice in a left-of-center party than the dissenting moderate voice in a far-right party.<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?w=600\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senator Specter&#8217;s switch to the Democratic Party is as much about political realignments as it is about Specter&#8217;s own desire to remain in power. The era of the Northeast moderate Republican is effectively over. Pennsylvania, along with the rest of the region, has been trending blue for a long time. And the minority who identify <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2286' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-AS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}