Congressman Joe Sestak has been arguing that Arlen Specter is a "flight risk" for Democrats. Arlen Specter has found a graceful way to rebut these claims, arguing that Joe Sestak wasn't enough of a partisan during his time as an Admiral:
"Congressman Sestak is a flagrant hypocrite in challenging my being a real Democrat when he did not register as a Democrat until 2006 just in time to run for Congress," Specter said in the statement. "His lame excuse for avoiding party affiliation, because he was in the [military] service, is undercut by his documented disinterest in the political process."
Of course, Sestak was an Admiral on active duty until only a couple months before February 2006. So, what Arlen Specter is really doing here is criticizing Sestak for not being partisan enough during his time as an Admiral.
Lots of officers, including Colin Powell, do not register with a political party when they are still in the military. The basic idea is that you don't want to politicize the military leadership.
Would Arlen Specter rather that all Admirals and Generals state their political preference for the whole county to see? I'm sure that wouldn't cause any problems at all.
Now, I am a partisan, and I argue that more Democrats should be active partisans. However, it also strikes me as Honduran-ly obvious that high ranking military personnel should most definitely not be partisans while they are still in the service.
Further, to call a veteran a "hypocrite" for only becoming a partisan after he left the service is to deny all veterans the right to fully participate in American political life. Once you leave the service, you should be allowed to become as much of a partisan as you want, free from charges of "hypocrisy" simply because you served your country in a non-partisan way.
Specter's ignorance of the enormous difficulties active duty service personnel face in voting (see here and here, for starters) was a nice touch to this classy attack.
Arlen Specter hasn't been a Democrat for very long, and he clearly still needs practice acting like one. As the Sestak campaign itself says, this is a Republican-style Swift Boat attack on Joe Sestak's military record, pure and simple.
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