A Specter Indeed

Finally the pun sticks: Arlen Specter has jumped the shark . In his most self-serving and risible move since the Magic Bullet Theory, Specter will become a Democrat and run accordingly in 2010. Tautologically speaking, no party should want a Senator who no longer wants to be a party member, but it was just yesterday that Rod wrote this :

what are the Republican party elites thinking the right thing to do is? Rail against financiers on behalf of the middle-class and working-class taxpayers, who are going to be soaked for years because of what those Wall Street SOBs did? Oh, no: they want to jettison social and religious conservatives.

Seriously: are there any sane right-wing populists out there who will challenge party incumbents in 2010 primaries? Stand up, get organized! Even if you have to run as a Democrat.

Not quite what one had in mind. Two very dangerous and bad things seem just a little more likely today: that the Democratic party will increasingly become the party of doubling down on the political economy of Bushism — same old FAIL, brand new socialism — and the Republican party will increasingly become the angry inch left over. And, yes, in the wake of the latest GM developments, I’m getting more and more uncomfortably comfortable with the ‘s’-word. If split goverment/labor ownership of a corporation isn’t socialism, nothing is.