Why would Democrats even consider trusting Specter?

As recently as the beginning of the month, Arlen Specter's name was being floated as a potential 60th vote to head off filibuster on Employee Free Choice Act.

There were even those--and this would be funny if it weren't so pathetic--who imagined the EFCA as the fulcrum that could lever Specter into the Democratic Party sometime between now and his re-election in 2010.

Anyone who believed that was a sap.

The outcome in Specter's latest to-be-or-not-to-be performance was as inevitable as in all his previous theatrical turns: Specter announced today that he will be joining the rest of the Civil War Re-Enactment Society Senate Republicans to filibuster the EFCA and will vote against it if it makes it to the floor.

Arlen Specter is a one-trick pony--before the vote he makes moderate-sounding rumblings, after which the extremist wing of the Republican party threatens him, after which Specter toes the GOP party line when the vote comes down. That's what he does. That's all he does.

Is it that he wants to do the moderate thing but he's too pusillanimous to stand up to the extremists in his party? Or is it that he simply loves to play Hamlet for the cameras before coming home to the extremists?

It doesn't matter. Any legislative strategy that hinges on Specter actually opposing the extremists in his own party is destined to fail.