Former Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter passes away
Arlen Specter, a key Senator from the Supreme Court nominations of Robert H. Bork and Clarence Thomas to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton — only to lose his seat in 2010 after quitting the Republican Party to become a Democrat, died Sunday morning at his home in Philadelphia.
He was 82.
Specter was suggested by former President, then- Representative Gerald Ford, he worked for the Warren Commission, investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
“Arlen Specter was always a fighter,” President Obama said in a statement issued Sunday, calling Mr. Specter “fiercely independent” and citing his “toughness and determination” in dealing with his personal health struggles.
When he made a bid for the White House in 1995, he denounced the Christian right as an extremist “fringe” — an unorthodox tactic for a candidate trying to win votes in a Republican primary. The campaign was short-lived; Mr. Specter ended it when he ran out of cash. Years later, he said wryly of the other candidates, “I was the only one of nine people in New Hampshire who wanted to keep the Department of Education.”
“Politics is routinely described as the art of the possible or the art of compromise. When one party insists on ideological purity, compromise is thwarted, and the two-party system fails to function.” – Specter
