Pretty darn cynical.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) opened his first campaign email to supporters highlighting his decision to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), signaling the senator will play up his opposition to the bill ahead of an expectedly tough primary battle [...]
"Last Tuesday, Senator Specter announced his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), also known as Card Check," the inaugural "Specter 2010 Campaign Update" read. "In a speech on the Senate floor, the Senator spoke out against the bill. Later, Senator Specter said, 'I won't support legislation that takes away the secret ballot.'"
Considering that Specter supported (with actual votes!) pretty much the same bill in the last Congress, it's pretty ballsy for him to now paint himself as a big champion of Big Business and anti-labor forces. Of course, given that he's already trailing in the polls against former Rep. and Club for Growth President Pat Toomey, desperation is a perfectly acceptable excuse for hypocrisy and lies (like the bit about "taking away the secret ballot").
What makes less sense is this:
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has begun running ads attacking a primary opponent who hasn’t even declared for their 2010 race.
Specter’s campaign announced Thursday that it has launched a cable ad buy across Pennsylvania hitting former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) for supporting deregulation and wanting to privatize Social Security. The ads will begin running more than a year before the primary.
This would be a great ad ... in a Democratic primary or general election. But in a Republican primary, especially a closed one in a state where 239,000 moderate Republicans switched parties last year, this ad suggests that Specter is still unaware of how dramatically the political ground has shifted from under him.
Update: Actually, Specter was a co-sponsor of that EFCA bill, before his fear of Toomey turned him into an anti-labor champion. Republicans would be moronic to trust anything he says or does this next year, like Lieberman in 2006 claiming he wanted nothing more than to see our troops home from Iraq. When politicians are up against the wall, they lie even more than usual, and Specter is delivering some serious whoppers.