For Specter, Payback is a Bi... Bear

For Specter, Payback is a Bi… Bear

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn

May 19, 2010

Mighty Barack Obama has once again struck out – and it couldn’t happen with a better surrogate at the plate – Arlen Specter (D-PA).

In the case of the Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Democrat for his final coda in politics, it seems that turnabout is fair play and that karma really is a bi… um, bear. When the going got tough, Obama threw Specter under the bus after using him for all he could in the Senate having gotten the octogenarian to vote for TARP, health care and just about any other soon to fail socialist scheme on the Obama agenda.

Specter, who proved his disloyalty to his former patrons, the Republican Party, long before making his re-conversion official, earned his just desserts and comeuppance by losing in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, May 18 to the more liberal Congressman Joe Sestak (D-7^th) by a 54 percent to 46 percent count. This after citing one of the main reasons for defecting back to the Democrats because Specter believed he could not defeat the eventual GOP nominee Pat Toomey in that party’s primary.

Sestak, although handily denying Specter a sixth term in the U.S. Senate, enters the general election campaign as an underdog to Toomey, who lost to Specter in the 2004 GOP primary.

Specter, long before returning to his Democratic roots, had been saddled with the label of RINO as a liberal Republican. He had been welcomed home to the Democrats by Barack Obama who declared his love and pledged support for the incumbent. However, when the race between the two Democrats tightened, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden could hardly be found on the campaign trail, proving they are with their candidate though thick and thicker; win or tie.

However, the taint of Obama already stuck to Specter, who suffered the wrath of voters for his disloyalty to the Republican Party, for not having been with the Democrats long enough to be trusted, for being an incumbent whose time had long since come and gone and because of his insufferable behavior during the town hall meetings last summer. Apparently enough voters do have long memories.

But for those who don’t have long memories, the names of Martha Coakley (D-MA), Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and Creigh Deeds (D-VA) should be the reminder that Obama surrogates, and by extension, Obama himself is now 0-4. I wish he played for the Yankees – and I’ve seen him throw a baseball. Full disclosure, I’m a lifelong Mets fan.

And to the Democrats who are all giddy over Mark Critz’s victory over Tim Burns in the special election in Pennsylvania’s 12^th Congressional District due to the death of John Murtha, relax. Critz was Murtha’s longtime aide in a district that is 2-1 Democratic in its voter registration.

The more important issue is the defeat of an arrogant incumbent who jumped ship to fend off the very vanquishing that has effectively ended his four-decade career. Like other incumbents already taken to the electoral woodshed, Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) and Congressman Alan Mollohan (D-WV), are examples of what is to come this November. The voters are tired of being ignored and taken for granted. Their voices are being heard on both sides of the aisle and order will soon be restored.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and political consultant living in Alexandria, VA.