Turncoat or Turn About is Fair Play?

When I was just a young tad spending my summers down in the black earth area of Southern Illinois known as Little Egypt some of us had a sport we called "bee swatting". That's where you'd poke a stick into a nest of bumble bees and swat them with ping-pong paddles when they'd come swarming out of the hole.

Obviously, one or more of us would pay the price for our stupidity before we'd cut out and leave the bees to themselves.

Here's what makes me think of this. Some Republicans are in a turmoil and buzzing up out of their holes over Senator Arlen Specter's decision to switch from the Republican to the Democratic party. And, of course, like those kids from my youth, the Democrats are merrily getting in their swats.

But, let's examine this a little shall we?

Many Republicans, I fear, may have smoked some wacky weed in their younger days since they seem to display a pronounced short-term memory loss. They sure weren't outraged when that preposterous buffoon Zell Miller of Georgia switched from Democrat to Republican--surely they haven't forgotten the fool challenging Chris Matthews to a duel. And, they welcomed with open arms the Knesset's very own Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, claiming to be independent but mostly aligned with Republican issues.

No, The Republicans have nothing about which to complain.

Aside from that, there's a couple of things about Specter that I find a tad hinky. Am I the only person in American that remembers that when he sat on the Warren Commission investigating President John Kennedy's murder, he was the one who came up with the magic bullet theory--that the bullet that passed through Kennedy's throat stopped dead in the air, dropped nearly a foot and then resumed its forward path to strike John Connolly in the wrist?

Here's the simple truth. The Democrats aren't really gaining and the Republicans aren't really losing, as Specter, more often than not, comes down on the side of Democrats earning him the enmity of conservatives. Hence his decision. He had no chance of reelection as a Republican. Zilch. None. So aside from bragging rights the Democrats really do not benefit from this, and many Republicans are happy to be shed of him.

So, like all turncoats before him, the only real potential winner is Specter himself.