Christine M. Flowers: Sen. Weather Vane

THERE are two schools of thought about Arlen Specter's defection (or rather, homecoming) to the Democrats.

The first is that he was so desperate to keep his spot in Congress, so incapable of hearing his name without the honorific "Sen." before it, that he jumped ship to avoid being destroyed in the GOP primary.

That's probably true.

The other is that he no longer felt at home in a party that had become increasingly conservative, rejecting his views on abortion, stem-cell research and trillion-dollar budgets, etc.

That's also probably true.

And guess what? The party is better off without him.

Specter is a weather vane, yielding to the strongest political wind. While he considers himself a "maverick" like his friend John McCain, the truth is that our senior senator is an opportunist.

Or, in his lexicon, a "moderate."

Moderates say they're for limited government spending, but then cast tie-breaker votes for trillion-dollar budgets.

Or think that subsidizing people who bought houses they couldn't afford is the right thing to do, even if those who lived within their means have to pay the bill.

Moderates admit that experimenting with human stem cells is moving into dangerous moral territory, but worth the effort if "real" human beings can be spared any physical pain.

Moderates vote for brilliant judges like John Roberts and Samuel Alito, but single-handedly kill the nomination of the most brilliant of all, Robert Bork. Spector pandered to the hysterics on that one.

Moderates, in a word, are inconsistent and undependable.

I prefer someone with strong convictions, someone who isn't so worried about offending the other side (but with moderates, what side is that?), someone who takes a stand even if it's the wrong one politically and doesn't apologize for being passionate about something. Anything.

We conservatives have been told, most recently by Sen. Olympia Snowe in the New York Times, that we have to "moderate" in order to keep good people like Specter in the fold.

My response to Snowe and her fellow travelers in the moderate movement is this:

We don't need to do anything, particularly not to trim our sails to make nice with a human weather vane.

While it's true that we might be out in the wilderness a bit longer than expected, at least we won't betray what we really believe in.

If we're pro-life, why should we open our tent to those who think abortion is a legitimate option? Do the the ladies and gents who believe in "reproductive freedom" over everything else welcome the other side into THEIR tent?

We shouldn't be willing to have social institutions like marriage changed in the relative blink of an eye, and mostly at the whim of our judges. If that makes us look bigoted and mean-spirited, so be it. Changing more than 2,000 years of social structure without the longest and hardest of thoughts is too big a price to pay to make Perez Hilton happy.

So we shouldn't pull out the hairshirts and flails to bemoan the loss of a man who was never a conservative to begin with, and who obviously cared more about his personal survival than preserving two-party checks and balances that he spoke so "passionately" about just days before he jumped ship.

It's time to stop catering to liberals-in-moderate clothing. Most of those who defected from the GOP during the last election might say they did so because they were horrified by fiscal excesses of the Bush administration and the mess in Iraq.

But I think the real reason they high-tailed it out of Dodge was because they didn't like having to make some uncomfortable choices on the so-called "social" issues, and used economics as a smokescreen.

It's a lot harder to be a conservative than it is to be a liberal. Liberals want everyone to be happy. (Except for Sarah Palin. Her, they want to waterboard.)

Moderates, I think, don't care if everyone is happy, and secretly think that some of that happiness is undeserved, but they're afraid to actually come out and say it.

Conservatives think happiness should be earned.

Sen. Specter, you didn't deserve us. Bon voyage. *

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer.

E-mail cflowers1961@yahoo.com.