Specter Dies

Regardless of the fact that he was never conservative enough for conservatives, and never reliable enough for liberals, Arlen Specter was an icon on Pennsylvania politics. He was diagnosed with late-stage Hodgkin’s lymphoma several years ago, but it seems he recently got a non-Hodgkin’s form of the disease and succumbed to it at 82.

14 thoughts on “Specter Dies”

  1. If anybody is obliged to send flowers to this funeral, for sure it’s Bill Clinton.

    Regarding Specter’s legacy, if the opposite of an ideologue is a chameleon, it’s unclear which does more harm to the public good.

  2. I never liked his politics, I never disliked the man himself. The problem today is that to many people can not separate the two.

    RIP Arlen. You did what was best for you and occasionally the people of the commonwealth were rewarded.

    1. Too many people see being wrong, as being the same thing as being evil.

      That may make a convenient shorthand for guiding short-term tactics — on the battlefield whatever motivates you to shoot the enemy is good — but in the long term it is not good to believe, because long-term tactics (strategy) may depend on getting your opponents’ motivations right.

      The people I regard as evil, independent of their ideology, are those who conceal their true agendas for the purpose of manipulating allies.

  3. For everything else he did, he is usually regarded as having been the leader in “Borking” Bork. I’m guessing that alone erased the rest, and earned his place in heaven.

    1. I thought Ted Kennedy was that, plus of course the Democrats had the Senate. Specter I assume was the Republican (INO) leader of that.

      Personally, I and many others thought the look of glee on his face when the got the gavel for the Senate Judiciary Committee was unholy.

      Final thought: the Democrats didn’t keep their bargain with him when he returned to his natural home. That seems unwise to me, unless they thought they’d reached their high point for the foreseeable future and it was all downhill from then. Which they may perceive to be the case now but not I think back then.

  4. “The problem today is that to many people can not separate the two.”

    Unbelievable, Un-F*cking-believable. The problem is that too many people DO separate the two. That is EXACTLY how we ended up with
    Specter, Graham, Hatch, Lugar AND Obama!!! Maybe he would have been a good neighbor, maybe he would have been a good drinking buddy, but you elect him to office. Term after term after term.

    The last thing I want when I die, is for those who dislike or disagree with me is to lie about “what a great guy he was” and I promise I won’t do it for anyone else.

    1. No, the problem is that people don’t separate the two. I can accept Hatch (my current and, sadly, future Senator) as a nice guy–because he is–but that doesn’t mean I ought to vote for him.

      My brother-in-law attended a Neighborhood Representative Meeting, where the representative was re-elected, even though she didn’t represent the neighborhood as well as my brother-in-law’s friend, who was also running for the position. The reason being, that she was a nice person, and a good neighbor. Now, if these people were willing to separate politics and the person, they’d be willing to vote against the political, even if the person herself was a nice neighbor!

  5. I’ve killed several rapists, during, before, or after the rape. Wow, I
    sure feel bad about being glad they’re dead, because now I have my moral
    betters sniffing in disdainful superiority at my barbarism. And I’ll bet
    the women regret being saved, too.

    1. There are people better off dead, ones that need killing. It’s one of the reasons I support the right of self defense. There are monsters out there, ones that I will not mourn their passing. But I’m not going to hate them to the point of taking joy in their passing, any more than I would expend the emotion on a rabid animal that needed to be put down.
      That’s the difference between “good, he’s dead” and “I’m glad he’s dead.”
      (Not that I filed the senator in the better-dead category, far from it. The worst my political opponents deserve is to be removed from office and, if they have committed crimes, to be prosecuted for those crimes.)

  6. Some have found me to be too harsh on Spector. I found him to be a New World Order shill like most of our elected officials. His hand on the Warren Commission does not endear him to my heart either. He certainly was not the worst guy out there but I find it hard to grieve for him.

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