As I said last week — Democrats, you can have this old coot. He’s not only an arrogant and selfish SOB, it sounds like he’s crazy now (or more crazy than usual).
“Well, I was sorry to disappoint many people. Frankly, I was disappointed that the Republican Party didn’t want me as their candidate,” Mr. Specter said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “But as a matter of principle, I’m becoming much more comfortable with the Democrats’ approach. And one of the items that I’m working on, Bob, is funding for medical research.”
Mr. Specter continued: “If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.”
So just to be clear, if we all went back in time (say, in a DeLorean) and pursued the Democrat healthcare agenda (which Specter thinks is like Nixon’s) — then Jack Kemp wouldn’t have died.
I’m not even sure what there is to say about this ranting. Except: I’ll be surprised if he is still the Senator from Pennsylvania after November 2010.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
Man, I can stand with all stripe of weirdos, and defend their right to weirdo beliefs.
But this “if you would have elected so and so, there would be no sick babies” garbage is low rent.
He sounds like a rehash of the Christopher Reeve incident with Kerry/Edwards ’04.
This man is now my favorite Senator. He is rapidly showing us what the final stages of delusions of grandeur look like. In fact, I think he and John Edwards should link up and form the Church of the All Powerful Stem Cell. Of course, they will have fight it out over which one would be the Patriarch.
What is it about these guys: lawyers who work in government. Is there any area of human endeavor that they’re not expert in?
What need is there for scientists, engineers, physicians – anyone in the hard sciences when there’s some lawyer-congressman or judge who knows everything?
Maybe Arlen feels the need to compete with Al Franken?
I don’t know why you’d be surprised if he’s still senator after the election. Murtha called Pennsyvanians racists, then apologized by saying they were just “rednecks”.
Obama called them bitter, clinging to God and guns. He also stated that he was out to bankrupt the coal industry.
I really don’t know what you have to do to lose an election in Pennsylvania.
Good points Jana, beside Florida and California, Pennsylvania can now be counted on for some laughs. It’s getting bad when the “normal” states are going goofy. But as to Specter’s comments, I’m reminded of the desperate men who tried to find the cup of youth in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the corrosive results when they chose poorly.
Reminds of Biden last summer saying that if Obama and Biden get elected then people like Christopher Reeve would walk and Michael J. Fox would be cured. (Seeing as Christopher Reeve was already dead, it would have been an even bigger miracle than just reversing his spinal cord damage.)
Specter, like Biden, is political detritus.
just a general comment from the straight side of the street: i’d feel very comfortable with a much larger world of gay patriots. keep it up (no pun intended).
Well my sister died from cancer three years ago (maybe it is 4 and I am losing count). It could have been a preventable death. It was undiagnosed bone cancer. No amount of research would have saved her life, but the lazy asses who were her doctors could have started by believing in her pain.
It seems in Pennsylvania (my home state), you have to be ethical, a good person and an outstanding citizen to lose an election.
Who can ever forget Mayor Goode who bombed his own people and they reelected them.
Maybe all the water in the coal mines has seeped into the drinking water down state.
Arlen just joins many who need to retire: Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, John Spratt, Lindsay Graham, John Kerry, John Murtha. When power becomes your motivator, it is time to GO!!!
Well he does bring up a good point about funding medical research, even if it is lost by bringing up Jack Kemp. I don’t really see anything wrong with Government funding R&D, considering how much everyone benefits from the fruits of those labors. It is critical we continue to move forward in complex technologies, since thats our best chance to raise productivity and has best growth potential. It can be debated about which ones the Government should invest in but I believe in the principle.
Bruce, I think people forget that Specter was a Demo-rat before he was a Republican. Whatever it takes, he will do it.
Anyone know he was Ira Einhorn’s sleazebag lawyer in the 70’s, who got him out on bail after the murder of Holly Maddux, so he could flee the country for many many years?
In order to be elected in PA (MY home state) you need to say what the people in Philadelphia & Pittsburgh want to hear, and perhaps give them free smokes and beer. (since they and many thousands of their dead relatives do all of the voting)
You need not have any standards, just campaign experience, and a D beside your name.
#9 – Thanks, josil. So would we!
Regards,
Peter H.
Getting back on topic – it seems that once you move to the Dark Side (i.e. the Dhimmicrat party), you lose whatever common sense you had prior to your conversion.
You either make stupid remarks (hello Joe Biden), make crooked business deals (hello Clintons), operate a gay escort service out of your DC residents (hello Bawney Fwank) or even kill someone and then try to cover it up (hello Teddy Kennedy).
These guys could fill up at least 3 seasons of Saturday Night Live. And that’s even without Al Franken.
Regards,
Peter H.
I’m certainly not a fan of Specter, but as a GOP nominee he had more of a chance in winning the general election than a nutjob like Pat2Me!!… whose only appeal of late seems to be to angry white men with piss-filled boots.
Frankly, both Pat2Me!! or Specter were bad choices for a GOP looking for redemption.
Focusing on Specter’s comments about SavingKemp misses his bigger and more important point: if PA GOP voters select Pat2Me!!, they’ve tossed the general away in the “Stampede for GOP Purity Campaign”.
The more interesting wrinkle on the Specter default to the Dems is if GOP leaders can convince the telegenic former PA Gov Tom Ridge to get into the race. If that happens –good bye Pat2Me!!… there aren’t enough sympathetic voters in the tri-state area to overpower Ridge’s popularity with PA voters –in the primary or the general. And Ridge can defeat Specter in a general after a spirited, well funded contest no matter who the PresidentsMen drag out from the WH.
Even now, a Quinnipiac poll puts the contest Specter-Toomey at 53-33 in the general; Specter-Ridge at 46-43.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/poll-specters-party-switch-pays-off-2009-05-04.html
I hope Ridge gets in… with both feet. And firmly plants them on Pat2Me!!’s backside for a push onto the political slagheap. Political karma will be such a tasty dish to serve up to Pat2Me!!. And for a moderate GOPer like TomRidge to do it would be justice served.
It isn’t really that Arlen was going crazyUncle about JackKemp… it was that Pat2Me!! is a package that won’t sell in the General and, hopefully, PA GOPers know that politics is about winning –not political suicide.
If you look at funding for the NIH it exploded once Republicans took control of Congress. It was 11 billion in 1995. In a decade it more than doubled. Bush funded AIDS like never before. The notion that Republicans haven’t spent enough is a fancy one.
It just doesn’t jive with the facts.
Darkeyedresolve: Unfortunately, with the socialized medicine plan currently sitting in Congress’s piggy-trough, you can almost guarantee R&D will dry up, disappear, go the way of the dodo and the dinosaur: It’s just not cost effective, and part of the plan they’ve already leaked makes it clear that newer and more expensive or even experimental treatments will be the first to fall under the axe simply due to DOLLARS.
The general problem with government funding R&D, though, is that – first and foremost – it’s just NOT going to be cost effective in any way once the little piggies line up to make sure peach contracts go to their buddies instead of the best-qualified candidate. Add to that overrunning the process with bureaucratic red tape, and just the overwhelming number of conditions (some rare and some not so rare) and handing the government power to play God and decide whose illnesses are “worth” curing. No offense to anyone suffering something I am not, but I’d obviously rather *MY* tax dollars go to research MS as opposed to other conditions, just like others would want theirs going to support *THEIR* ailments, but it would be impossible to divvy up the funds in that manner and, in the end, we would still get nowhere.
I just believe that in terms of medical research, there is probably not a lot of market incentive to put in a lot of money and energy into experimental vaccines and so on. I think the Government could step in in terms of dollars to help foster that growth. You are right to point out that Government money usually comes with a lot of red tape but it doesn’t have to be the care. Medical research is definitely becoming competitve and the US Government will want to make sure its medical technology is also competitive. I guess I would hope that the realist pursuit of power would keep the Government from being too much a hinderance.
And when Specter dies, who will blame whom?
“And when Specter dies, who will blame whom?” That’s EASY. It’ll be George Bush’s fault somehow.
Lack of embryonic stem cell research, no doubt.
One thing is for certain, Ignatius, there’ll be lots of loud voices from the farRight and farLeft hammering Specter into the ground at that point. My hope is that he never dies in office… that TomRidge takes the seat away from him.
A pro-Choice GOP moderate in the Senate? It’d be a terrific turn of events in Specter’s twist of partisan pragmatics.
MM, Ridge is my first choice for his record and for karma. I would love Specter’s attempt to save his own a** result in a defeat to a Republican he should have been but in the end never was. I’ll settle for his defeat in a bitter Democratic primary, though.
I’m with Josil (comment #9.) The more the merrier, gay patriots. Gay or straight, this country needs more patriots. Keep up the good work!
Best regards, Beth