A Pennsylvania pro-family activist says the late Senator Arlen Specter fought the good fight before finally succumbing to cancer on Sunday. She tells OneNewsNow the high-profile "moderate" was never reliable to the pro-family movement.
Specter spent most of his 30 years as Pennsylvania's longest serving senator as a Republican -- though he was referred to as a "RINO" (Republican in name only) by many conservatives, who were often frustrated with his votes on pro-family issues.
Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, says the Republican lawmaker came down on the wrong side of many issues traditionally supported by the GOP.
"He was a vote we could never count on when it came to pro-family, pro-marriage, pro-life issues. We could just not count on him because he was a RINO," she offers. "The liberals like to say he was a moderate, but that means he was wrong on a majority of issues."
Gramley says the people of Pennsylvania finally said enough is enough during the Senate campaign of 2010 after he switched to the Democratic Party, and ultimately lost the primary to Joe Sestak, who in turn lost to Republican Pat Toomey in the general election.
"We elected someone who was much more conservative than Arlen Specter when we elected Pat Toomey," Gramley explains. "... It was a hard fight to get a conservative in there. But definitely we can depend on a conservative vote from Pat Toomey compared to an almost guaranteed liberal vote from Arlen Specter."
Specter's funeral and burial is today (Tuesday) in Penn Valley, near Philadelphia. He was 82 years old.