An equal-opportunity irritant, our Arlen is

Conservatives are furious at Arlen Specter again, this time because it's February.

No, they're angry at the Pennsylvania senator because he's one of only three Republicans who voted for the $787 billion stimulus bill. Without Specter's support, the recession-fighting legislation probably would have died.

The package, President Obama's baby, has money for extended unemployment benefits, road and bridge construction, tax cuts, rail projects, food stamps, and much more. There's probably a National Frisbee Museum tucked somewhere in its 1,000-plus pages.

Conservatives say the legislation costs too much, won't solve the recession, and will burden us with debt. They have been extremely alarmed about our soaring national debt since approximately Jan. 20.

After Specter voted for the bill, conservatives went thumbing through their thesaurus for the outrage section. One columnist called it the "last straw." There were the inevitable charges that Specter is a "RINO" - Republican In Name Only. (They settled on that sophisticated barb after Specter seemed unfazed by taunts of "I know you are, but what am I?")

The spokeswoman for the anti-tax Club for Growth, Nachama Soloveichik, went further, saying that many conservatives view Specter's vote as "the ultimate act of treason."

Well, now. Can we all agree that casting any vote on the floor of the Senate is not comparable to, say, defecting to al-Qaeda? Or showing the Iranians how to split the atom? Thanks to our freedom to think and act according to our beliefs, nobody required Ms. Soloveichik to get a rabies test.

Conservatives are venting their spleens at Specter because it's all they can do. They can't beat him. They can't stop him from - gasp! - voting with Democrats every now and then. They can't make him change his party affiliation.

Even when Specter got a life-threatening illness, conservatives were not rid of him. Did he leave the Senate to convalesce? No, he bounced back to spend another treasonous $10 billion or so on the National Institutes of Health.

Specter is like the conservatives' version of a zombie, except, instead of eating their brains, he perpetrates the horror of spending more money on cancer research.

In the wake of Specter's vote for the stimulus bill, conservatives are vowing to defeat him in the 2010 Republican primary. They say he's "vulnerable."

Last year's presidential race did convert a lot of moderate Pennsylvania Republicans - the kind of people who would have voted for Specter in a GOP primary - into Democrats. But conservatives are all talk at the moment. Their best hope, Pat Toomey, who failed to beat Specter in 2004, has already said he's more interested in running for governor. And any less-known candidate hoping to challenge Specter should have started raising money in, roughly, 1995.

Even in a state trending Democratic, more than one Democrat has backed away from going up against Specter. Talking head Chris Matthews came to his senses. The only announced Democratic candidate is Joe Torsella, former head of the National Constitution Center. For such a "vulnerable" incumbent, Specter's not looking at much of a contest so far.

Over the years, Specter has infuriated Democrats, too. Feminists and pro-choice advocates have complained bitterly about him at times. Even as he helped pass the Democratic stimulus bill, he angered the left by trimming spending and adding tax cuts.

Specter had better watch out. If he keeps making everyone so mad, he's liable to win a sixth term.