Dear Senator Arlen Specter:
As a life long Democrat who grew up in a life long Democratic household where we sang the praises of F.D.R. and we knew all the words to “Happy Days Are Here Again” and wherein we knew the difference between the National Industrial Recovery Act and the W.P.A. all I can say is God Spead Arlen Specter!”
You see being a Democrat in the years after L.B.J. means having to say you’re endlessly sorry about every position that you have stated publicly and then changeing your mind at least a hundred times before finally comprimising whatever it was you were thinking in the first place and then in a final rhetorical collapse you say that you didn’t say what you said you said, you just said (insert incomprehensible tautological assertion here).
So being a Democrat will be a challenge for you. IN the G.O.P. no one ever says they’re sorry. There’s no crying in baseball and certainly there are no tears in the Republican Party.
You will have to figure out how to say things that you mean and then un-mean them before meaning them while suggesting it all might have been otherwise. This isn’t a prevailing skill in your old party but its the lingua franca among the Dems.
Maybe you can toughen the old donkey up a bit? She used to be tough. She really did.
In the meantime don’t get me wrong. We’re proud to have you. You’ve stood on the side of fairness for children and for the ill and you are a sagacious and reasoned pollitician in an age when these qualifications have all too often been routinely overlooked by demagogues and spinners.
We are rooting for you sir.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 