Specter's Party Switch Shows GOP's Isolation, Decline

Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic Party is a sign that someone moderate-to-liberal is an alien in the modern GOP.

Republican true believers will ventilate that Specter is a traitor, and good riddance, etc., and worse, but the GOP is a small tent getting smaller.

Of course Specter is trying to hang on to his Pennsylvania Senate seat, so his motives are highly personal.

So what? That's politics.

What Specter realized was that he would probably lose in a primary to a more conservative candidate - - who would then get wiped out in the 2010 general election, since Pennsylvania, which went for Obama in 2008, is going to go Democratic again.

So why should he stick around in the GOP and sacrifice his career, and pretty decent voting record, to try and move his state's political party where it doesn't want to be - - the mainstream?

Under Bush/Cheney, the GOP crippled itself. Now it's on its way to the political graveyard as a noisy, but small fringe party - - strong in parts of the west and south and parts of places like Waukesha County, too - - too extreme to win national majorities.

Call this the resurrection of the Goldwaterites, circa 1964, who also drove the middle into the arms of the Democratic Party.

History repeats itself. Again. So be it.