Specter-tacular?

You've no doubt heard by now: In a move that further weakens an already flailing GOP, Arlen Spector, senior senator from Pennsylvania, defected to the Democratic Party. Citing the fact that the GOP has “moved far to the right,” (source: Financial Times). Mr. Spector now gives the President the prospect of a filibuster proof 60% majority in the U.S. Legislature's upper house. This coupled with the Democrat's nearly 100 person majority in the House of Representatives should have the American citizenry bracing for President Obama to run rough-shod over any chance of the promotion of a Republican agenda.

However, the optimist that I am, I see Spector's defection as a good thing. Let this serve as a wake up call to my Party! No longer can Republicans be beholden to ideologues that wish promote legislation based on emotion rather than logic! let us find not only our will to fight, but our will to win. To carve out a place in history that is not dictated by fear, but by courage. Robert F. Kennedy once said, in a speech at the California Institute of Technology in 1968:

There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.

That, my friends, is our Grand Old Party today.

haha...I wish Spector's defection was framed as poetically as all that. The reality is that Spector faced a tough Republican primary challenge next spring. This conservative challenger, Pat Toomey, is the Party's retribution for Spector's backing of President Obama's $700 billion stimulus bill. We are witnessing my Republican party at its worst.

If the Republican Party is to remain viable with an increasingly younger, politically active voting block, then we must make a push to the center as so wisely stated by Olympia Snowe (R-Maine): “If the Republican party fully intends to become a majority party in the future, it must move from the far right back toward the middle.”