PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS Editorial: THOSE WATCHING Sen. Arlen Specter’s long career in public service might at times have felt like they were watching a vigorous tennis match between admiration and disappointment…
Our own editorial page singled him out early on for standing up to divisiveness and obstructionism: “Specter, bless him, has started asking lonely questions about some of the folks who have been providing footsoldiers for his party for years, but have the potential to split it apart . . . Specter had the effrontery to support separation of church and state before an audience that doesn’t flinch at this great democracy becoming a theocratic state, like Iran. . .” That was in 1994, when he ran (briefly) for president.
When Specter was elected to the Senate in 1980, there were many moderate Republicans. By the time he left the party in 2009, there were just a few. And when he finally left the Senate in 2010, he gave a “closing argument” rather than a goodbye speech, excoriating senators “who insist on ideological purity as a precondition,” bemoaning the fact that compromising had become a dirty word… (more)
