Specter Switch Day Two

All Specter All The Time

I'm in six days to election busy mode so haven't had as much time to dig into the Specter stuff (or for that matter the end of the Legislative session) as I'd like. With all my rambling on seniority I can't believe I missed the Tom Harkin angle, but Bleeding Heartland has it covered.

And apparently Vice President Joe is the guy who made this happen, with five years of serious work and groundwork going all the way back to the Robert Bork hearings. Biden is more a Man Of The Senate than any VP since LBJ; you don't spend 36 years in an institution like that without leaving some mark. And now it seems Biden may have even more influence on the Senate than Johnson did, in part because he's been just deferential enough (whereas LBJ tried to keep running the Senate and was quickly shot down.)

"It is true that being a Republican moderate sometimes feels like being a cast member of Survivor -- you are presented with multiple challenges, and you often get the distinct feeling that you're no longer welcome in the tribe. But it is truly a dangerous signal that a Republican senator of nearly three decades no longer felt able to remain in the party." -- Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.

Or RINO-Maine, as the conservative bloggers would say. Overwhelming rightroots reaction, from Boss Limbaugh on down, is good riddance to Specter. In fairness, we had much the same reaction to Joe Lieberman. (Though with better reasons, and Specter to his credit made a clean break rather than coming up with a sham "Independent Republican" or "Connecticut for Lieberman" kind of label. Not that he didn't consider an independent run--he did.)

And not only has Specter joined the Democratic Party, it appears he's also now a member of the Wu-Tang Clan.