While looking at a YouTube video about something else, I stumbled on one that surprised me, mostly because I would have expected it to have received more attention than it has. Pardon the intrusion if you have already seen it.

The video shows Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, in 2001, talking about the hurt and confusion he and other Repub senators felt when Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont announced that he was leaving the Republican Party (for reasons substantially similar to those Specter just gave for his own party switch, the Repubs were no longer a party for moderates, etc.).

The surprising thing is that Specter proposed a Senate rule change that would bar a senator from changing parties in mid-session. Here’s the precise quote:

"I intend to propose a rule change which would preclude a future reoccurrence of a senators change in parties in midsession , organizing with the opposition that would cause the upheaval  which is now resulting.

I take second place to no one on independence  voting.

But it is my view that the organizational vote belongs to the party that supported the election of a particular senator.

I believe that is the expectation and certainly it has been very abrupt when a party change although may have occurred in the past with only minor ripples would cause the dislocation that this one has."

The video is just below. It's 12:35 long. The new rule stuff starts around 4:40.

It's possible that there's a technical defense that would acquit Specter from a charge of abject hypocrisy. He is specifically talking about the vote that a senator owes, to the party under whose nomination he was elected, when the Senate organizes at the beginning of a session, or in the precise case of a Jeffords switch, which switched majority status from the Repubs to the Dems, triggering a new organizational vote.

Although Specter's recent change of parties is very consquential, with implications for the magic 60-vote majority status, he has not caused the majority status of the parties to switch. I'm not sure how close Specter came to formally proposing the rule change, other than saying on the Senate floor that he would do so. It was certainly never adopted.

What think?