Perhaps readers may recall that Senator Specter worked on the Warren Commission investigation of the John Kennedy assassination. The fact is certainly an indication of how long he has managed to survive in national politics.
But details of his work on the Commission show us something else too.
Senator Specter was the author of the Single-Bullet Theory. When the Commission could not sort out a set of contradictory facts, Specter secretly mashed them together into the theory now long-since discredited by all serious students of the assassination.
Perhaps this shift in parties is another such brainstorm?
The Republican party well deserves its fate. For decades it has been a ridiculous organization, a rickety marriage of philosophical conservatives with the Christian Mullahs of America's Religious Right.
In other words, the impossible marriage of those who in theory believe in freedoms with those who do not.
The party has stood on the wrong side of almost every great ethical issue for decades.
Moreover, it gave the world eight years of the brain-dead Bush administration which also happened to be the least ethical group of people to control the White House in memory. It has taken Americans as a whole a while to begin fully grasping the extent of the disaster Bush created on almost every front from foreign affairs to the domestic economy.
I do think the Religious Right itself is in decline. Their worst period of interfering in politics and demanding unreasonable laws and regulations represented perhaps the last great outburst of these backward, anti-scientific people as a force in American politics. The full decline will take a while, but I think its inexorable decline has begun.
The force of progress and clear thought and science was overwhelming them with fear, and they sought to stop progress in many public spheres, a truly impossible task in a world where science has become a gigantic, unstoppable establishment.
I think this fact has been sinking in to some degree, and they will return to exercising their religious rights where they belong, at home and in churches.
Of course, without the strength of the Religious Right, the Republicans become de facto a permanent minority party.
If these speculations are correct, then we are at an historic watershed in American politics, as when the Whig Party died.
Unfortunately, it does not necessarily mean a more liberal America. The Democratic Party has become an almost meaningless one in terms of philosophy or policies. Its last president, the sleazy Clinton, could pass, judged by his few, undistinguished achievements, as a middle-of-the-road Republican.
This shift in politics may represent a truly historic opportunity for Obama. It may give him the room, as people full of uncertainties look desperately for leadership, to accomplish a great deal to become a president of Rooseveltian proportions. Maybe.
THE MAGIC BULLET STRIKES
