Specter's departure raises a great question

For many conservatives who still consider themselves Republicans, Specter's departure brought a collective "Good riddance, Arlen!" Strategy-based conservatives lamented his exit, though, worried about filibuster-proof majorities and declining prospects of re-gaining majority status anytime soon.

To his credit, Senator Specter was very honest about the primary motivation for his seismic decision: political survival. His own political survival. For many it didn't seem that bizarre that he assumed the principles-be-damned posture, choosing instead the save-Arlen's-career stance. It's a sign of the times.

The whole episode begs the underlying question about our party system, because --as we all know -- Arlen Specter's not the only (now former) Republican to be selective about the planks he likes in the party platform. Here is my epiphany-produced, food-for-thought question of the day: Should the party bend to the membership, or should the membership bend to the party's platform?

The Arlen Specters of the world like the former model -- an ever-changing "big tent" sort of approach, where the party's survival reigns over the party's purity. Winning wrong is always better than losing, even if it's losing right. Oddly enough, they treat the Constitution the same way they treat a party platform. They choose and herald the parts they like and ignore the parts they don't.

There are plenty of principle-compromised Republicans around who think that the right wing has destroyed the effectiveness of their party. When declaring failure, it's probably best to consider all possibilities, and the one the moderates haven't considered is that they themselves ruined the party. Is it possible that the Republicans find themselves in their current predicament because they failed in several areas, like curbing federal spending, ending pork-barrel spending, solving the immigration problem, and reforming the nation's entitlement programs? All of which would have happened, by the way, if the "right wing" of the party had had their way.

Barack Obama won, not because he is a socialist, but because he eloquently promised change. Seems most Americans despise what's been happening with our federal government, and while in their core they believe in limited government, the most prominent emotion has been a desire for newness, freshness. Perhaps elections aren't about ideology anymore, but instead who most eloquently articulates and promises a departure from a despised status quo.

Arlen Specter was one of the Republican Party's worst ideological polluters. Glad he's gone for many reasons. He'll feel more at home in the highly-populated trashy trailer park of failed liberalism than the more sparsely-occupied majestic chambers of conservative correctness.

Conservative principles are not wrong, outdated, obsolete, or ineffective. They are still the answer, and more needed now than ever. What's missing is the collective backbone to artfully articulate the promise that power lies in individual freedom, not a despicable dependence on a ginormous federal bureacracy.

The Republican party may or may not survive. The good news is that the conservative principles haven't changed. Whoever can most effectively sell them will rule the day.