Arlen Specter: Political Animal

Make no mistake about it, Arlen Specter will do anything to keep his seat in the Senate. After voting with the Democrats for the Obama spending bill, he realized that Pennsylvania Republicans, who are tired of his charade, would probably unseat him in a primary election. He knows that his chances of winning the general election are far better in PA, which leans more and more Democratic each year, than in getting through a Republican primary which would have called him to task for his traitorous voting record.

Now, like Benedict Arnold, he has positioned himself for political survival with the party that he thinks will win the next set of elections. Can we blame the Senator?

Specter is first and foremost a calculating, Darwinian survivor. He has crunched the numbers. He knows that he has already lost the PA Republican primary. He hopes that he can catch the wave of conservative PA Dems, who have become disillusioned with the radical left-wing slant of the Obama administration. They are a group that may well embrace a liberal, former-Republican and entrenched incumbent to serve as their candidate. He is betting that he can position himself as a moderate, like Joe Lieberman, who can widely appeal to the voters of both parties in the general election.

He may be correct. What remains to be seen is how strongly this conservative anger will swell. Will Specter's defection to the Democratic party protect him from a defeat at the hands of conservatives, independents, and disillusioned Dems who have become horrified by rampant government spending, spending which Specter supports, and growing signs of Obama administration incompetence in the sphere of foreign policy?

I am glad that Specter has finally come out of the political closet. It has been very painful for these many years to watch him pretend to like conservatives, when all along he was sneaking out on the weekends to party with his liberal buddies. It has been a marriage of convenience between Arlen and the Republican party, but in these changing times, Specter need not hide his shame.