Liberal Democrat Comes Home

In a quite different take on the Specter defection from the previous post, John Nichols of the Nation Magazine writes:

Arlen Specter started his political life as a liberal Democrat. And now the
senior senator from Pennsylvania is returning to the fold. Specter, who has
served five terms in the Senate as the last of the old-school Rockefeller
Republicans, has finally given up on his long, fruitless quest to revive the
spirit of east-coast liberalism within what has become a hard-right party.

"Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the
Republican Party has moved far to the right," the senator explained in a statement announcing his
decision to leave the GOP fold. "Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in
Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my
political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans."

Specter, who was a liberal Democratic lawyer in Phildelphia in the 1960s
before accepting a GOP nomination for district attorney as part of a
reform-movement battle to break the city's Democratic machine, has long been the
most left-leaning member of the Republican caucus in the chamber. He was
targeted for defeat by conservatives -- led by the Wall Street-funded Club for
Growth -- in 2004. President Bush and other key Republicans defended him that
year, not out of love for Specter but because they did not want to lose a seat
representing a blue state.