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 ...
Did anyone watch his speech? That is one bitter old b@st@rd.
And George Bush also.
FINALLY!! May he never darken our door again!
The Sphincter is finally gone.
See how this creep and all the elitists believe they’re special? Fellow senators (royalty) are supposed to support your re-election no matter what your stance on the issues. I despise these people!
Don’t go away mad......
"Au revoirrrrrrr, ya cheese-eatin arse hole!"
Finally!! Good riddance A**hole!
Please, someone should mail the Scoundrel an enlarged printout of this thread, preferably Poster Sized so he can get the jist of what people really think about the Two-faced Immoral Sleezeball! He tried to sneak thru some $ 142 Million in earmarks on Reid’s Last Porkbarrel Abortion!
How about the pieces of a Used Roll of Toilet Paper??
Just Wondering? I would have my doubts on that also!
This little turncoat prick survived cancer, too bad, for all the damage he’s done to this country, may he rot in hell.
Mr. Specter, you’re fired.
Exile him to an deserted island in the Orkneys where he can fulfill his lifelong dream of being subject to Scottish law.
Good riddance, ‘Scotsman’!
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