WEBCommentary(tm) - A Specter Of Truth

I will be honest, I’ve still got my party hat on and am still a little hung over from the going away celebration held in honor of Snarlin’ Arlen Specter after he finally realized that he was in no way, shape or form a Republican, much less a steady and true conservative. Yes, it was a riotous affair where the guest of honor was purposefully not invited to attend and where the most familiar saying was, “Hey Arlen! Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!” That was on Tuesday night and conservatives and real Republicans are still celebrating loudly today.

Liberals and Democrats held their own party as well. With Al Franken looking ready to be seated into the Senate after a myriad of legal challenges exposing the absolute absurdity of the election laws in some states, they held a victory party of their own to celebrate Mr. Specter coming into their fold. They cheered and wailed and hooted and hollered as the thought of a sixty vote majority and the as the ability to squash almost any attempts to prevent their agenda from moving forward died.

Watching these two groups and how and why they reacted the way they did provides a specter of truth as to what each holds dear. For conservatives they were just glad to be rid of a man that is what pathetically passes for a Republican in the North East; someone not liberal enough to be a Democrat and that had been hanging around where he was not wanted for far too long. For liberals they were just glad that their power was becoming more and more consolidated. Despite talk about desiring bi-partisan solutions, their glee at potentially not having to do anything in a bi-partisan manner betrayed them and called them out loud and clear. One party stood on their principle and celebrated removing a cancer on that principle. The other stood on their lust for control and celebrated inching ever closer to gaining that control.

Liberals, I have no doubt, will claim things differently. They always seem to do just that. You could hold a blue flower up in front of them and if they thought they could gain something by it would claim that it was a red bird instead. It has been their modus operandi for years. And now they have another fellow traveler in their midst who has come out of the closet. For years Specter had hidden in that proverbial closet switching away from being a Democrat when it politically suited him to become a Republican, even claiming to be a “Reagan Republican,” at any opportunity. But he has finally given up that charade by joining a party so far divested from Reagan-like principles that it is laughable to the honest observer.

Yes, it is true that Specter still deceives himself though. One of his popular lines has been that the Republican Party has moved too far to the right and that he no longer felt at home there. This of course is, as they say, poppycock. The Republican Party when you look at who they have sent to Washington across the board was more conservative in the 1980’s and mid 1990’s than they are today. Currently they are embracing, until the last election cycle, high spending, deficit creating budgets filled with unconstitutional pork. Things on that front do appear to be changing slightly however. Meanwhile the Democratic Party has advanced at least as far to the left as the Republicans had. But considering they were starting off much further down the road to leftism they are still much further to the left. And yet still somehow Arlen Specter expects any thinking soul to believe the canard he has tried to put forth.

Specter has not been honest with himself. He knows why he left the party and it has nothing to do with the lie that the party had become too conservative. As if believing in personal liberty and the equal creation of all man kind “too much” could ever be a bad thing? Maybe someday the haughty Senator will explain that one. No, Specter read the tea leaves and they were not telling him good things. Their message was that Republicans in Pennsylvania were fed up with his liberal ways and his sprinklings of quasi-conservative actions used at times to lure them into voting for him would not be tolerated from this point hence. It was the Republicans in Pennsylvania who, in recent polling, showed that they were no longer going to put up with Specter’s wandering eye towards socialism and were squarely behind Pat Toomey, a much more conservative candidate, to represent the party come the 2010 election.

Specter, like a typical politician only worried about his own skin, knew his deception was over and his time was up. So he jumped ship to avoid having to go through a similar set of events as those he did in 2004 where he was continually harangued at campaign stops and, according to some reports, almost brought to the verge of tears when speakers at conservative and Republican Party events he was attending endorsed his opponent and the crowds showed up with Pat Toomey signs, shirts and hats on even back then.

In the end Specter was just the same old coward as always; too afraid of not only the fight he would have to go through, but petrified that he would loose that fight and have to figure out what to do with the rest of his life without his precious Senate seat to make him feel important and give his life meaning. What will be interesting to watch and see is how many sheep who would never, ever, not in a million years have voted for Arlen Specter because he had an “R” next to his name will now gleefully and blindly support him because there is that magical and mystical “D” there now. All while denying that the letter next to his name ever meant anything to them of course and continuing to lie to themselves too like Specter has been lying to himself.

But he has finally taken a great step towards admitting the truth. And that truth has set him free; free to let the liberal beast inside him loose at long last. Stand up Mr. Specter and say it! “Hello, I’m Arlen Specter and I’m a flaming liberal!”

J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the Pittsburgh Conservative Examiner for Examiner.com. He is also the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts http://www.cafepress.com/rightthings. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at http://www.libertyreborn.com