Chairman Specter reconsidered

In the post below, I reconsidered the gang of 14 deal in light of the Roberts and Alito confirmation proceedings. This is also a good time to reconsider the Republican leadership’s decision a year ago not to deny Arlen Specter the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
I don’t think there’s any question that this was the right move. Specter has conducted himself well, and might have caused problems had he been on the outside. Unlike with the gang of 14 deal, Power Line had the right line on this one. We grudgingly agreed with the decision of the Senate leadership not to block Specter.
In my view, the common denominator here is that on both issues — the gang of 14 deal and the Specter chairmanship — conservatives were better served by Senate Republicans than many of us believed at the time.