Written By : John Hawkins

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has an anti-Arlen Specter page up that is purely designed to make liberals angry with him.

For example, here’s a video featuring George Bush talking about how wonderful Arlen Specter was from 2004,

Here’s another one featuring Rick Santorum talking about how Arlen Specter isn’t a liberal.

Now obviously, these videos are not aimed at Republicans. They’re also not intended for the general election, when videos like this might actually help Specter appeal to the middle.

So, what they’re obviously trying to do here is to get liberal groups to primary Specter.

Is this a smart strategy?

Well, competitive primaries cost a lot of money and tend to be divisive. Moreover, Specter is going to have an advantage in name recognition in PA and would be more likely to draw crossover votes than anyone who’d beat him.

On the other hand, there are a lot of Republicans who would crawl over broken glass to beat Specter at this point and even Democrats are willing to admit that he switched to the Democratic party because he doesn’t believe in anything other than keeping his comfy job in the Senate until he dies.

So, it’s more of wash than people might think, although the NRSC’s strategy probably — but not definitely — will pay more dividends.

PS: On the other hand, there’s a rumor floating around that the NRSC is trying to convince Tom Ridge to compete against Pat Toomey in a primary. Now, if Tom Ridge wanted to run on his own — fine — in fact, he might even win in Pennsylvania, where he’s very popular — although I’d prefer it if he stayed out of what would inevitably become a very ugly intraparty fight.

That being said, let me give John Cornyn at the NRSC the best piece of advice he’s ever gotten in his life: stay out of Republican primaries.

The moment people sense any idea the NRSC or for that matter, the RNC, or the NRCC are working against conservative Republican candidates in any race, anywhere in America, it will cause a backlash and tens of millions of dollars in donations will stay in people’s wallets.

I can tell you personally, the day any of those organizations starts trying to help a moderate candidate beat a conservative candidate, will be the day I encourage every one of my readers to stop donating to that organization. Many other blogs, talk radio hosts, and conservative activists would do the same thing.

This should be obvious after the series of debacles that have inevitably occurred over the last few years when the GOP decided to pick fights with candidates supported by the base, but people trapped inside the DC bubble don’t always see the obvious.

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