especially after whatever dear leader did to get the nomination, you shouldn't be so shocked anymore.
what are you referring to? i don't want to start a fight (and to be honest, i'll probably dismiss your gripe as sour grapes), i'm just curious what your complaint is of obama's nomination campaign.
i would have loved to see lieberman, specter, snowe, collins and ben nelson all jump ship together and become The Independents.
agreed - THAT would have been amazing.
as to your first part- NAFTA would be one example. another would be the state secret defenses that the obama administration is expanding upon. . .both are examples where during the primary, obama stated he would a) re-negotiate nafta (to the cheers of environmentalists and unions alike) and b) criticized bush for using the state secret defense on wiretapping (to the cheers of lots of people who have no idea what's actually going on). . .instead, he has now come out and said there will be no renegotiation of nafta (which i'm thankful for; as an added bonus: he says the colombia free trade agreement should be passed as well...), and has a DOJ that is looking to expand where the state secret defense can be used on "illegal" wiretapping. . .
i would rather of specter engaged in a frank discussion about the future of the GOP- not that mitch mcconnell would listen, but there are a lot of people out there who don't like the GOP in washington. part of that was apparent in the tea party protests, which were started in response to TARP (which specter voted for, and was probably the main reason why he was down in the polls). i would rather specter have just become an independent, instead of switching to the democrats, where he will become another pain-in-the-ass moderate/conservative member of the senate that will bog down the precious agenda of the progressives. . .there were going to be republicans that would vote with democrats on some issues, and there were going to be democrats that voted with republicans on other issues. . .simply having "60" still isn't going to change that because of the reality of those 5 members.
i have no doubt that specter truly believes that the gop in washington doesn't adequately represent him anymore. . .much like lincoln chaffee (who had no business losing his seat a few years ago). . .i know that some will see this as "addition by subtraction" (see manimtired), but specter always seemed to me to be a reasonable person (even if he did come up with that cockamamie "magic bullet" theory).