Posted on 12/21/2010 7:39:20 AM PST by Erik Latranyi
WASHINGTON - The family photographs came down Monday, packed in bubble wrap and boxes for the trip home, leaving nothing but some nails and sun-faded outlines on the walls of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's inner office.
After 30 years on Capitol Hill, the state's longest-serving senator is clearing out and heading back to Philadelphia.
Specter, 80, will deliver his final floor speech Tuesday morning, decrying a gridlocked Senate that has lost its political center and the sense of collegiality that once kept senators from campaigning against one another.
"Eating or defeating your own is a form of sophisticated cannibalism," Specter, a Democrat, plans to say, according to his prepared remarks, referring to conservative Republican senators - notably Jim DeMint of South Carolina - who helped tea-party insurgents fell three moderate incumbents in the 2010 primaries.
"Collegiality can obviously not be maintained when negotiating with someone out to defeat you, especially in your own party," Specter says in the 2,600-word speech, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. "In some quarters, compromising has become a dirty word. . . . Politics is no longer the art of the possible when senators are intransigent in their positions."
In some ways, Specter's journey over the last 20 months sums up the plight of the homeless centrist: He was all but forced out of the Republican Party and was embraced by the White House and other top Democrats, but could not survive his new party's primary.
He says he is cheered by the triumph of Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who lost to a tea-party candidate in the primary but who has evidently won reelection as a write-in.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
No one could find a better example of what’s wrong with American Politics than Arlen Specter, though there are many contenders for the crown. Here’s the embodiment of the RINO turned Democrat who made his bones as a young operative by whitewashing the Kennedy assassination, and as low a point as that was, it was all downhill from there. He engineered the circumstances for the flight of murderer Ira Einhorn, out of favors owed to the local political establishment, and everything he’s done since then has been consistent with political whoredom. Bye bye Arlen.
Yeah; I don't speak Scottish, so maybe that's right.....My bad....LOL
Good Ridance to Sphincter! He cared about nothing except his own Arse for 30 Horrible Years! Don’t fret tho, Sphinchter will never go away!
Will he quote Scottish law in his final speech?
Specter thinks way too highly of himself and it shows.
Heavens to Betsy. Just go. Nobody is going to miss you. The country will survive. The sun will come up tomorrow.
Somebody finally found the real “magic bullet” -
and put it to good use!
However, it seems that in his heart, he was always a democrat. If forget who said back in '09 that he was happy when he heard Specter changed parties, but was disappointed that Specter was still was a democrat.
Hear! Hear! Well said, Mr. Sphincter.
One question, though. How did you become a Sinator in the first place?
What a scumbag...
Arlen Spector was the Magic Bullet Theory in the Senate.
His ideals were all over the place and caused a lot of damage.
Hey Specter; GFY!!!
I hope to see that procession continue for a few more elections. Don’t let the door hit your ass as you leave.
Who is he talking to......Dems, Pubs, himself.........
Boy, he sure made Rick Santorum look stupid.
Typical cherry picking by The Professional Left.
Sphincter has been in politics for about 150 years but the Inquirer only goes back 20 MONTHS to make whatever futile point it is pathetically trying to make.
Hey, Inquirer guy. Sphincter started his career as a RAT. How come you don't mention that?
Corrupt Bass Turd.
Don’t let the door...... you POS.
Centrist my ass. The only accurate description of the guy is Opportunist.
In all fairness, Rick did that to himself.
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