Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

You cannot shame the shameless.

We still have time to mess this up!

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

T R E 4 5 O N

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Let there be snark.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

After roe, women are no longer free.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Arlen Specter RIP

Reader Interactions

63Comments

  1. 1.

    Mathguy

    Sorry, it’s really hard to forgive him for the Thomas hearings and what he did to Anita Hill. Just because he had a “come to Jeebus” moment doesn’t erase his essential asshole-ishness.

  2. 2.

    smintheus

    I don’t know that he did have a “come to Jeebus” moment. He knew he’d lose the Republican primary, seems clear that’s why he switched parties.

  4. 4.

    Alison

    Doesn’t erase it, no, but this does make me think forgiveness can be found:

    https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/257530891805528064

    Years after Thomas hearing, Specter felt badly about how he had treated Anita Hill, and sought my help in arranging a reconciliation.

    I mean, you could say, too little too late, and I wouldn’t argue. But…the fact that he did this at least shows a glimmer more character than the vast majority of his colleagues, IMO…

  5. 5.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    His switch came far too late, if he had more balls and followed his conscience during the Bush years (I’m basing this on statements he made during the second Avignon term) we might have a better and different country. But grading him on a Republicans who knew better curve that runs from (A) Jim Webb and Lincoln Chaffee through (B) Chuck Hagel and (C) Colin Powell, down to (F) Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Richard Lugar, I guess I’d give him a B+
    ETA: this seems a little harsher than I’d intended, but I’ve always really believed Specter knew better. I remember an article about he and Olly whining about how small their “Wednesday group” of moderate Rs had become, all the while they were voting with Rove, Cheney and the K Street project.

  10. 10.

    Corner Stone

    Whatever else he might have done, I respect the hell out of him for leaving the insane Republican party.

    That’s because you’re a fucking moron.
    “Will enable me to be re-elected.”

    One of the more devastating political ads of the day.

  11. 11.

    PsiFighter37

    RIP, even though I cared little for him, even when he conveniently switched sides. His only lasting (positive) legislative contribution is that if Obama gets re-elected, his vote helped us get through healthcare reform.

    ETA: And I agree with others who are pointing out that respecting him for leaving the GOP is total malarkey. He left because he knew Toomey would kick his ass. There was no George W. Bush or Rick Santorum to save him as there was in 2004.

  12. 12.

    Yutsano

    Gonna wait for geg6 to weigh in on this. I can imagine she has a few choice thoughts on his passing.

    I’ll just say he’s onto his next adventure, whatever that may be.

  14. 14.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    I have a feeling he will go down in history as the guy who brought forward the Magic Bullet Theory in the Kennedy Assassination.

  16. 16.

    geg6

    Well, he was my senator and I have mixed feelings for Arlen. I’ll never forget what he did to Anita Hill, but he did apologize to her, I believe. He made a lot of votes in favor of stuff that he, self-evidently, knew were a load of crap, but he always stayed loudly and proudly pro-choice.

    The best I can think to say of him is that he may have been the last of the “good” Republicans. I never liked most Republicans at all, but he wasn’t batshit crazy, bigoted, or stupid. And that’s a rare thing among today’s GOP.

    And to those who ascribe the worst of intentions to his party switch, I won’t deny that he wanted to stay in the Senate. But I truly do believe that he couldn’t deal with it another minute. That’s why he finally had to deal with White House on the ACA vote and switch. It was driving him nuts to deal with those people in the GOP.

  17. 17.

    Elizabelle

    I thought he was an often good man in a party that went off the rails. Which he left.

    I don’t think that many of you give him enough credit.

    RIP Arlen Specter, and I respect him a lot more than President Snowe.

  18. 18.

    JPL

    @geg6: Thanks for the comment. It is difficult to look past his treatment of Anita Hill but something must be said about his apologizing to her.

  20. 20.

    Paul

    @rikyrah:

    Amen to that. And to those people who can’t seem to forgive Specter for his past, can you name any Democrat who is free of sin?

    There were plenty of Dems who voted for the Iraq war, almost every Dem voted to keep Gitmo open etc etc.

  21. 21.

    Corner Stone

    @geg6:

    I never liked most Republicans at all, but he wasn’t batshit crazy, bigoted, or stupid.

    That makes him craven. Because he continued to vote with them until his ass got hung over the drying line.

  22. 22.

    smintheus

    @Ben Franklin: And Specter started out as a Democrat, only switching to the Republicans after he was elected district attorney in Philly (bizarrely enough running on the GOP ticket but as a registered Dem). He was an opportunist from the beginning.

  25. 25.

    TG Chicago

    IMHO, if there is a reason to respect him, it’s not due to his party switch per se, but for his votes for Obamacare and the stimulus (the latter of which was when he was still a Republican).

  28. 28.

    Corner Stone

    @raven: I was otherwise engaged. Seemed like a pretty good game. Some homer calls, IMO, but that late INT by SCAR just killed them.

  29. 29.

    James E. Powell

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    His switch came far too late, if he had more balls and followed his conscience during the Bush years

    You are assuming he had a conscience, right? Because when I consider everything I know about Specter, I don’t see any evidence of a conscience. I see a politician doing what he needs to do to get re-elected.

  30. 30.

    tcolberg

    He was very critical of Robert Bork during his confirmation and stood with the Dems against him.

  36. 36.

    JoyfulA

    @geg6: I have trouble calling him a good Republican, but the last of the sane Republicans works.

    He did not change parties for any other reason than to get reelected. He’d narrowly won renomination against Toomey the last time around–dragged along by GW and Santorum–and he had no hopes of the GOP nomination in 2010. He did not make the jump until the White House and the DNC had gotten the PA Democratic establishment, from Rendell and Casey on down, in line. I got to see a lot of this from the semi-inside as an “influential Democrat” invited to one of the meet-and-greet breakfasts staged for him around the state.

    At any rate, his first vote as a Democrat was against cramdown, which is hard to forgive.

  37. 37.

    JoyfulA

    @geg6: I have trouble calling him a good Republican, but the last of the sane Republicans works.

    He did not change parties for any other reason than to get reelected. He’d narrowly won renomination against Toomey the last time around–dragged along by GW and Santorum–and he had no hopes of the GOP nomination in 2010. He did not make the jump until the White House and the DNC had gotten the PA Democratic establishment, from Rendell and Casey on down, in line. I got to see a lot of this from the semi-inside as an “influential Democrat” invited to one of the meet-and-greet breakfasts staged for him around the state.

    At any rate, his first vote as a Democrat was against cramdown, which is hard to forgive.

  38. 38.

    JoyfulA

    @geg6: I have trouble calling him a good Republican, but the last of the sane Republicans works.

    He did not change parties for any other reason than to get reelected. He’d narrowly won renomination against Toomey the last time around–dragged along by GW and Santorum–and he had no hopes of the GOP nomination in 2010. He did not make the jump until the White House and the DNC had gotten the PA Democratic establishment, from Rendell and Casey on down, in line. I got to see a lot of this from the semi-inside as an “influential Democrat” invited to one of the meet-and-greet breakfasts staged for him around the state.

    At any rate, his first vote as a Democrat was against cramdown, which is hard to forgive.

  39. 39.

    JoyfulA

    Phooey! I wrote a long response to geg6, and then the site crashed. My last line was: His first vote as a Democrat was against Cramdown.

  40. 40.

    JoyfulA

    Phooey! I wrote a long response to geg6, and then the site crashed. My last line was: His first vote as a Democrat was against Cramdown.

  41. 41.

    eemom

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought it was the stimulus where he cast the “saving” vote (together with Collins and Snowe), not HCR.

    Anyway, he didn’t leave the republican party, it left him. Also too, good news for John McCain. Too soon?

  42. 42.

    eemom

    @Chris:

    in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

    I had a colleague who used to love to say that, in the context of some people fucking up less than others.

  44. 44.

    geg6

    @JoyfulA:

    When I said “good” Republican, sane is a given even if unsaid.

    And I never said I liked the guy, although not everything he ever did or said was horrible. I just have some empathy for the man. That is why I’m a Democrat.

  45. 45.

    DFS

    Arlen Specter believed in nothing except the divine right of Arlen Specter to hold a Senate seat in perpetuity. It’s nice to imagine that anything he did had anything to do with actual principles, but it didn’t.

  46. 46.

    Another Halocene Human

    OT but relevant to our interests.

    So, I just found this definition of butthurt on Brad Hicks’ livejournal:

    I mentioned this to many people at Worldcon, and nobody I met disputed my nickname for it: “the butthurt panel.” For those of you who are unfamiliar with this particular bit of Internet (mostly gamer) slang, “butthurt” is when somebody who has received some trivial or minor injury or insult insists on monopolizing the conversation, insists on constantly steering all conversations back to how much they hurt, insists that their trivial inconvenience or insult or injury was as serious and painful as (say, for example) anal rape.

  47. 47.

    Dan

    “X was actually an asshole who does not deserve to rest in peace.”- Balloon Juice commenters after every death, ever

  49. 49.

    waratah

    I have wondered if any of those senators or congress people think about how the votes they made will be looked at in history and by their children and grandchildren.

  50. 50.

    JoyfulA

    @geg6: I lived in Philly for a couple of decades, and I guess I got an overdose of both Rendell and the Specters (wife Joan was on city council for a long time; she started a frozen dessert business, whose products immediately appeared in every supermarket).

  51. 51.

    I_D_Inuse

    You called it. Whatever, why-ever we will never know what prompted his change of party, not once but twice, but…by his actions, not his words he did try to reconcile right versus wrong.

  53. 53.

    PsiFighter37

    @Corner Stone: Not sure if comparing Specter to Gandhi is really fair to the latter, but I get the gist of your main point. I did a very in-depth report on Gandhi in high school (showing a bit of my youth / age here, depending on your perspective), and this is definitively a true statement.

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    The man faced cancer with dignity. Multiple times. And he wrote a book to encourages others in the same situation, I think. Politics aside, I give him good marks as a human being.

  56. 56.

    PurpleGirl

    “He was a man, take him for all in all,
    [We] shall not look upon his like again.”

    Hamlet, Act I, Scene II

  57. 57.

    gene108

    @Corner Stone:

    There’s the old quip from either Birla or Tata about how it cost them a fortune for Gandhi to live in poverty.

    @hoi polloi:

    He did switch and he did call out the Republican leadership for going crazy.

    If more senior Republicans took a stand against the right-wing entertainers extremists like Limbaugh, Hannity, et. al. you’d have a different GOP today. As it is these guys gave up control of their party to talking heads and Grover Norquist.

  58. 58.

    The Other Chuck

    @Another Halocene Human: I’m pretty sure the etymology of “butthurt” refers to the resentful pouting of a spanked child.

    As for Specter’s vote against Bork, he was a key player in getting Clarence Thomas confirmed. Is he even slightly better than Bork?

  59. 59.

    Bruce S

    “I respect the hell out of him for leaving the insane Republican party.”

    Low bar for “respecting the hell” out of someone, but then we’re talking about an ex-GOPer who has just barely escaped final destination at the Gates of Hell.

  60. 60.

    Ken Pidcock

    Because of Arlen Specter, I cannot claim never to have voted for a Republican.

    His sins are well documented, but it has to be acknowledged that, if we had a Senate filled with his like, we’d be a hell of a lot better off.

  61. 61.

    dexwood

    Fuck him. May there be a special place in Hell, if Hell exists, for those who could have done far more for their fellow humans, but didn’t.

  62. 62.

    Joey Giraud

    @The Other Chuck:

    Is he even slightly better than Bork?

    Much as I detest Uncle Clarence, Bork would have been worse, if only because Bork would actually influence other justices.

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