Justifiable cannibalism

Arlen Specter delivered his farewell speech to the Senate today. He pretentiously called it his “final argument” but at least managed, I hope, to avoid citation to Scottish law.
Tim Carney, who says he was just starting to feel a little sentimental about the departure of the stubborn old independent, found Specter’s speech “an angry, petty, mean, self-serving screed that betrayed a total lack of self-awareness.”
But not self-absorption. Specter, who ducked his Republican primary challenger and lost to his Democratic one, warned that “eating or defeating your own is a form of sophisticated cannibalism.” A bit melodramatic, don’t you think?
Anyway, for Republicans, Specter was never really our own. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have become a Democrat.