Kevin R. C. Gutzman

May 07, 2009

Okay, surely I can’t be the only one who finds it highly gratifying to see the Democrats relegate Arlen Specter to the back bench, absolutely last in seniority, for bucking their party’s interest.  Decades of acting against his old party’s principles, with zero consequences, ending in his abandonment of their caucus, and he must have thought he had used them perfectly.  But the Democrats play for keeps.  To them, political loyalty matters.  One needn’t agree with all of the Democrats’ policy positions to think that there’s something admirable about a party that won’t put up with Specter for 10 seconds.

If George W. Bush had had any principles at all, Specter would have received his comeupance long ago.

Specter always behaved as if he were truly special.  Just think of his vote in the Clinton impeachment trial, where—contrary to literally all precedent—he invoked a Scottish verdict.  The locus classicus of Specterish stupidity, however, will always be his buffoonish performance as a member of the Judiciary Committee as it considered the Robert Bork nomination, which was so deliciously recounted in Bork’s The Tempting of America  When it came to raw senatorial i.q., Specter gave Joe Biden a run for his money.