Broken News: Specter to electorate: "...from my cold, dead hands”

HARRISBURG—In a stunning announcement today, Pennsylvania’s senior Senator, Arlen Specter, announced that he was switching from the Republican party to the Democratic party in a thinly veiled attempt to hold onto his seat in the 2010 midterms.

“Good people of Pennsylvania, you will knock me out of this seat when I’m dead and fucking buried,” the sweaty and panicked new Democrat announced to the assembled media. “With recent demographic shifts in the state, coupled with your performance in last year's presidential election, I can see the writing on the wall. And that writing says ‘kill, strangle, wound, lie, and cheat anything or anyone who tries to take this seat.' You thought a Republican primary challenge was going to take me down? I just flipped the script, motherfuckers. Specter forever! You can have my seat when you pry it from my cold dead hands!”

The Senator is of course referring to his Republican primary challenge from orthodox right winger Pat Toomey. Early polling has Senator Specter down over 20 points and unlikely to even gain the nomination of his party.

Those close to the Senator note that while he will be nominally a Democrat, he in no way will change his moderate Republican views nor alter the enabling pisspot behavior that had him decrying the same tactics, opinions, and judges he would almost immediately help push through his Judiciary Committee during the Bush years.

“Oh yeah, he’s still the same guy, albeit more desperate and worried” an aide to the Senator said. “This is completely a naked move to hold onto that seat with those wrinkled, bony hands for as long as he can. He didn’t suddenly become enamored with socialism. He’s just hoping that residual disgust over the Republican leadership of the country will let him waltz back to his seat, when the only thing that’s changed about him is the letter next to his name.”

Political analysts see Specter easily able to coast to victory in 2010 based soley on name recognition and party affiliation. While the right wing attitudes of Pat Toomey are perfect for the fever swamps of the Republican primary and surely would have defeated Specter, in a larger general election they taint Toomey with the similar stink of right wing crazy that Pennsylvania, which formerly called Rick Santorum its senator, is still desperately trying to wash off.

“He’s a Democrat now?” asked Billy Wozniak, a confused and disinterested voter from Kittaning, in between naps. “Whatever. I can’t reflexively vote against him based on party affiliation, so I’m not going to bother to learn if he’s made his ideas more like the state he represents. I’ll just assume he does and continue voting for him based on the fact that he’s been senator since this state was founded.” He finished before dozing off again.

“Wait!” Wozniak said, snapping awake with a snort and a cough. “Wasn’t his ’04 re-election entirely based around the fact that it was his last go-round and we all needed to reward him for being elected so many times by electing him one final time… because we owed him or something? Ahh fuck it, whatever. Like I have time to learn about a third party.”

Sources close to Specter say he has been taking judo and a krav maga class, engaged in weapons training, and carries no less than 12 knives on his body at any given time. An increasingly paranoid and tense Specter feels that these challenges may soon move beyond the mere electoral process and may have to move his contesting of the seat into straight physical combat and murder of those he sees as potential rivals.

Those close to the senator say that Mr. Specter has begun the process of mentally preparing himself to devolve into an almost animalistic, feral state should post-party switch polling not show an immediate uptick in his election prospects. Should this occur, Specter plans to paint himself the same color as the actual senate chair in which he sits and proceed to attack anyone who enters his peripheral vision.

Aides hope this contingency will be avoided by the state once again rubber-stamping another six years in office for Mr. Specter.

“Don’t they owe him?” one aide was heard to say. “I mean he really, nakedly wants to hold onto the thing in any unprincipled way possible. Can't they admire his conviction to bend his convictions just so he can stay in office? Isn’t that enough? I mean, this is America!”

This same aide was reluctant to confirm that, mere minutes after his press conference, Specter received a personalized invitation from Senator Joe Lieberman offering him provisional membership in the Senate's Emasculated Irrelevance Club.