"Two Peas In A Pod..."

The protrait on the left is the infamous Benedict Arnold, whose name has lived in infamy as being synonymous with the word traitor, having taken the course of defection during the mid-American Revolutionary War from the Continental Army to fight for the British Empire. The gentleman on the right is the far less famous Pennslyania Senator, Arlen Spector, yet, as of this Monday, nevertheless a latter-day traitor to his state's constituents, his previous affiliation with the Republican party and to his own, now fully exposed, shallow principles.

Specter's defection now assures the Democrat controlled Senate the 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority needed to far better assume the passage of President Obama's social engineering agenda. No matter how Senator Specter wishes to couch his reasons for jumping political parties, I view this switch of allegiance to be one not for philosophical principal, but for political expediency. Specter has long been regarded among his previous Republican cohorts as a RINO - a "Republican In Name Only" - his 5-term voting record in the Senate providing testimony to his more moderate and often liberal leanings than a consistent embracing of conservative philosophy. Not begrudgingy, I must give the Senator his just due, he being able to see the handwriting on the wall and realizing that his chances of winning a sixth term as a Republican candidate in his home state were slim at best, knowing that prior to the last general election 239,000 former Peenslyvania Republicans and independents switched to the Democrat party. Overtly opportunist or not, the pure and simple fact is, for Senator Specter it is a matter of political survival.

Lamenting over Specter's sudden departure form the Republican tent will little serve the future of the Republican party as a whole. As much as I am personlly skeptical of President Obama's current direction for this country, believing he is speading our nation too thin and future generations even thinner with his rampant bent on unchecked and far from vetted spending, I also undestand why many independents and Republicans elected to cast their vote for the Democrat party: the past Republican administration having adandoned their conservative base of supporters who looked to their party to uphold unwaveringly the principles of maintaining a vigilant stance on national security, a smaller and less intrusive government, and fiscal responsibility.

The true test of whether or not Senator Specter's gamble to jump ship will come in the 2010 mid-term elections when his constituency will determine his worthiness to remain their senior Senator, having by that time sufficient time to gauge their pleasure or displeasure with President Obama and the Democratic controlled congress's ever expanding social agenda. That mid-term report card may find Senator Specter the recipient of his sixth term in the U.S. Senate or on the outside looking in at a newly canonized Republican majority. Stranger things have happened. Even Benedict Arnold had a few admirers.