Goodbye And Good Riddance To Arlen Specter by Tim Siggia

Goodbye And Good Riddance To Arlen Specter

By Tim Siggia

May 06, 2009

"This above all: To thine own self be true,

And it must follow as the night the day;

Thou canst not be false to any man."

-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene III

It took a number of years, but at long last another Republican In Name Only (RINO) has followed in the footsteps of Jim Jeffords of Vermont. On Tuesday, April 28, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced his switch to the Democratic Party. Democrats, of course, welcomed the errant Pennsylvanian with open arms. President Barack Obama was overjoyed. Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, on the other hand, was furious and upset with Specter, accusing him of "flipping the bird" to those who had helped him over the years in keeping his Senate seat. On the one hand, I can understand Mr. Steele's outrage at Specter's ingratitude. On the other, however, I cannot help but wonder about two things: First, didn't he see this coming, if not now, eventually? And second, why the outrage in the first place? You would think he, and the rest of the Republican Party with him, would be happy to finally have this obnoxious renegade out of their hair once and for all.

So now, after a 43-year leave of absence, Sen. Specter is finally reunited with the party of his true allegiance. It was in 1966 that Specter, a Democrat up to that point, left the ranks of the Democrats to become a Republican. Was it because of a basic change of political philosophy? No, he was a liberal then as he's still a liberal now. Rather, it was for the basest of political motives that Specter switched his allegiance: expediency. His chances of being nominated, and therefore elected, were better as a Republican than as a Democrat. So, bye-bye, Democrats!

This didn't mean, however, that Specter had ceased to be a Democrat simply because he changed the initial after his name from a D to an R. He was, in fact, still a Democrat in everything but name, and continued to be a thorn in the side of the Republican Party ever since. The Republican Party had already started becoming the home of conservatives two years before Specter joined it, with the failed presidential candidacy of Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Yet it was also even then, to a degree, at least, the "Big Tent" party, with the Rockefeller-stripe liberals also claiming it as their home. Though Richard Nixon was himself no conservative, it was under his administration that the Republicans became increasingly identified with conservatism, a philosophy which Specter made it clear from the beginning he wanted no part of.

So it was that Specter was strongly pro-abortion in the face of a pro-life Republican platform plank on the subject of the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973. In 1999, when President Bill Clinton was impeached and on trial in the Senate, Specter was one of eight turncoat Republicans who broke ranks with their party to vote for Clinton's acquittal on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice that were virtually proven. Clinton's defense team never denied the guilt of their client, their feeble excuse being that "these crimes do not rise to the level of impeachment." Note the wording: They admitted that Clinton was in fact a criminal! Yet his crimes, as they saw it, did not rise to the level of impeachment, though that level is neither specifically defined nor even mentioned in the Constitution.

Then just this year, the liberal Specter again showed his true stripes by voting for bailouts of the insurance and automotive industries, and by being one of only three Republican senators to break ranks with their party and vote for the Obama "stimulus" package, the other two being Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine.

As it was with his liberalism, Specter proved himself consistent on another count as well: pragmatism. Faced with a challenge for his Senate seat from a genuine Republican, conservative Pat Toomey, Specter found himself vulnerable as numerous polls showed Pennsylvania Republicans favoring Toomey over Specter. He had been in this situation before, of course, back in 2004, but with a significant difference this time in that George W. Bush and Rick Santorum are both out of office now, and neither can come to his rescue as they did back then. The obvious solution? Bolt the Republican Party and run as a Democrat. Though Specter, in his official announcement, said this was a difficult and painful decision for him to make, the truth is that it was anything but difficult, and certainly not painful. Specter was never really a Republican at heart, and was never truly at home in the Republican Party. He always thought like a Democrat, acted like a Democrat, and, on the issues that really mattered, voted like a Democrat.

It can be argued, of course, that with Specter's defection and the now all-but-certain ascendancy of Minnesota Democrat Al Franken to the Senate, that the Democrats will now have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Dirty little secret: They already had it! Since he first took office as a Republican, Arlen Specter has been the living, breathing definition of RINO, and Democrats have long known that they could always count on him to be one with them when the chips were really down. Now, at long last, he is a RINO no longer: He is now a Democrat in name as well as every other respect. Though Specter's departure from the Republican ranks leaves a bit of temporary damage, the Republican Party should realize that in the long run it will be far better without him than it ever was with him. Democrats might also have reason to be dubious of their new recruit: At age 79, how many more useful years will Specter have for them? At any rate, the only proper Republican response to all this is goodbye, and good riddance to a senator who in the long run has proven himself far more a liability than an asset to their party.

Now if only Senators Snowe and Collins would follow his example.