Specter: Being a Republican no fun anymore

WELL, ARLEN SPECTER just crossed an aisle as wide as the Delaware River.  He is becoming a Democrat, elevating the Republican McParty's  outbursts of hysteria to Vesuvian levels.  And in the early damage-control reaction the best that Republican National Chairman Michael Steele could offer, allowing for his minimal political insights,  was that the Pennsylvania senator was, after all, a renegade with a left-wing voting record. In a prepared statement (who writes these things anyway?)  Steele further noted that Specter was not acting on  "principles of any kind" but rather on the  reality that he was going to be defeated in the  Republican primary. Meantime,  Specter's other navel-gazing critics will have to take a number for their turns on the Fox network. The veins will be popping out of Sean Hannity's forehead.   

But just as it failed to spin socialism, Marxism and all of the other isms into the cloth worn by President Obama, few people outside of Rush Limbaugh's revivalist followers will be impressed by the current GOP's obtuse vocabulary.  Clearly, his former party had put an overwhelming hit on  him by posting up a right-winger in the next senatorial primary with overwhelming appeal to the shrinking right-wing base.  Yes, Sir Michael, you could bet the farm and every luxury car in Pennsylvania that Specter would lose.  And Specter was no more disaffected by his party's suffocating base than the 200,000 Pennsylvania Republicans who are now registered as Democrats.

Although Specter's forced defection will cause more havoc in the Senate's Republican caucus, where it clings to its  fantasy of Government by Filibuster,  don't look for a sudden change in ideological direction.  Check out its gagging  resistance to the appointment of  Kansas Gov.  Kathleen Sibelius as secretary of health and human services.  How toxic could she be as a Democrat who was widely popular in one of the most Republican states in the Union?   Oh, she's pro-choice.  I see.  Republicans now in charge of controlling their party's destiny just don't get it.    

There was an old poem that said "for want  a nail the shoe was lost" and  "for want of a horse the rider was lost."

The GOP today has no horses nor riders.  Nor ideas.  Without them,  the party of Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh  is sounding only its death rattle.  The Moral?  Be careful what you wish for...