arlen specter managed to vote against obama's budget and he voted against the mortgage cramdown amendment, and he announced his opposition to obama's OLC nominee, and he announced his opposition to a central pillar of the administration's health reform plan, and he also announced his opposition to the funding mechanism for an alternative health-care reform proposal (thus effectively threatening to kill the possibility health reform altogether), and he told a reporter that he wanted norm coleman to get the minnesota senate seat over al franken. all that in a single week since he became a democrat!
but that's not all that surprising. what is surprising is that the democrats are actually rebelling against the sweetheart seniority deal. seriously, i didn't know they had that in them. i've gotten so used to the senate democrats rolling over no matter what happens. of course, giving specter seniority means taking seniority away from other senate democrats. so it looks like they can grow a spine, but only when it threatens their own prerogatives.
meanwhile, the grumbling about specter might actually be having an effect! suddenly, specter claims he "misspoke" about the coleman thing. if there's a primary challenge, maybe he'll decide that he misspoke about other stuff as well.
