U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party achieved what many thought impossible.

It united the Republican Party.

At least for a few minutes.

Conservatives and moderates alike — including many who have bemoaned the GOP's rightward shift and seeming lack of inclusiveness — condemned Specter today.

They said his decision is little more than a shameful act of desperation and self-preservation.

But at the end of the day, the 79-year-old lawmaker lived up to his reputation as The Contrarian, as Time magazine once labeled him. He is a survivor who thrives in the political maelstrom.

In other words: They should have seen this coming.

"Few people like controversy and complexity as he does," said G. Terry Madonna, a political analyst at Franklin & Marshall College. "He thrives in and relishes these situations."

Remember the single-bullet theory?

Anita Hill?

Scottish law?

The photo-op of him and President Barack Obama together after passage of the controversial stimulus package?

You get the idea.

This time, he understood he would lose the 2010 primary to Pat Toomey if he ran as a Republican.

So he essentially conceded that race and switched into survival mode — and switched political parties.

That there appears to be no hidden motive — that Specter's decision was so transparent — is what really bugs the Republicans, even those who supported him in the past.

He put politics over principle, they say.

"I have long thought that he's very, very hungry for position," said Paul R. Thibault, a former Lancaster County commissioner who campaigned for Specter in the 2004 primary. "This just showed it."

Said former Lancaster City Mayor Charlie Smithgall, who also campaigned here for Specter in the spring of 2004: "I think he's more interested in the job and the power than he is in representing the people.

"He seems desperate," Smithgall said. "That's what disappoints me more than anything.

"He's just, 'I want to be re-elected again and I'll find the easiest way to do it, no matter what," said Smithgall. "The idea of any race, any primary or general election, is to get your base out. Evidently he saw he couldn't get a base out."

Former state Sen. Gib Armstrong, who endorsed Specter in the 2004 primary, said he has "real problems with someone who switches their loyalties for personal gain."

"I don't think he could have won as a Republican in the primary. I think he would have lost for sure," Armstrong said.

Now that the 2010 general election could be a Specter-Toomey rematch — but open to all voters, as opposed to the state's closed-primary process — the challenger has a much tougher row to hoe.

"I don't think Toomey can win statewide," said Armstrong. "I don't see it happening. He may share some of my own philosophies. But you win in the middle. You don't win on the left. You don't win on the right. You win in the middle.

"Specter would win in that case," he said. "I'll say this: Arlen's a hard worker, an extremely hard worker. If he's healthy, he's going to be out there 24 hours a day."

But Armstrong added that if party-switching is the only way Specter can survive, it's time for him to retire. "I think it's time for him to move on," said Armstrong.

As for the conservative members of the GOP, those who align themselves with Toomey?

Well, their reaction to Specter's move was, essentially, Good Riddance.

Glen Beiler Jr., an Akron resident who coordinated Toomey's campaign against Specter here in 2004, said Specter's defection is a "gain for conservatism."

"And contrary to popular belief conservative, principled Republicans can win a general election in Pennsylvania," Beiler said. "When former Senator (Rick) Santorum first ran (for the Senate in 1994), Specter and other liberal Republicans warned a conservative could not win statewide. Santorum went on to win not once but twice."

Lancaster County GOP Chairman Craig Ebersole, who has not said who he would have favored in a Specter-Toomey primary matchup, railed against the incumbent for seeking fame and committee slots and abandoning conservative principles.

"The Republican Party is not mad at Arlen Specter, but we are disappointed," said Ebersole. "Every six years, we would think to ourselves, 'Maybe it will be different this time,' and each time he would find another way to disappoint us."

Specter, for example, has repeatedly expressed his support for building a federal courthouse in Lancaster County. But it has never come to fruition despite his reassurances.

"The joke that I have been hearing around Lancaster was, 'Arlen Specter is up for re-election, guess that means another ride in a bus looking at potential federal courthouse sites,'" said Ebersole.

So, does no Republican sympathize with Specter?

Not Thibault, who had served as chairman of the Lancaster Township GOP until 2008 — when he resigned, in part, because he felt the county party was not inclusive enough to a wider range of views.

"The man turns coat to save his salary and position in Washington. In a time like this, it reveals the insanity in Washington," he said.

Asked whether he sympathized with Specter's feeling that the Republican primary process is dominated by the GOP's right wing, Thibault said: "I think he's referring to the citizens of the United States. I'm sorry that he has that view of his fellow Americans."

Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts, who just Monday morning joined Specter at a Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry breakfast, slammed Specter for aligning with the Democrats.

"From a trillion-dollar energy tax, to government-run health care, to a $3.6 trillion budget and deficit spending as far as the eye can see, I am saddened that Senator Specter has chosen to align himself with the party that has brought us these kinds of irresponsible policies," Pitts said in a prepared statement.

Former county GOP Chairman Dave Dumeyer said moderates are still welcome in the GOP, but added the party has some "soul searching to do."

"To some extent, what Specter says does have a ring of truth about it," Dumeyer said. "The Republicans are going to have to decide where we draw the line of ideological purity and the desire to win in this state, which is becoming more Democratic."

But Jess Yescalis, who worked as a consultant to Specter in his 2004 re-election campaign, said he and many of those who supported Specter feel betrayed. He said the party is a big tent — and that Specter was in trouble mostly because of his vote for the stimulus plan.

"When he did that, even folks who voted for him in the past said, 'Enough is enough,'" said Yescalis. "I think he realized he was going to lose in the primary so he switched sides.

"It had nothing to do with principle," he said, "and everything to do with political expediency."


Staff writer Tom Murse can be reached at tmurse@LNPnews.com or 481-6021.