Life Among the Cannibals: A Political Career, a Tea Party Uprising, and the End of Governing As We Know It

Though the winners generally write the history of events, Specter’s account of the campaign loss that ended his 30-year Senate career is proof that a few parting words can serve as a pointed political epitaph. In this engaging, but heavy-handed look at the disappearance of the center in Republican party politics, Specter (Never Give In: Battling Cancer in the Senate) lays bare his resentments, and offers his knowledgeable, withering critique of brutal partisanship in national politics. After five terms as a liberal Republican, Specter famously—and critics said, desperately—switched parties and ran for re-election as a Democrat in 2010, prompting one disgruntled voter to call him a “political transvestite” as he headed to an electoral defeat. Describing the GOP’s decades-long rightward drift, Specter engages in much score-settling and self-justification, from noting that Richard Nixon urged civility in his 1969 inaugural address to dismissing Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) as a “scorched earth partisan,” and suggesting that his successor, Sen. Pat Toomey has “a reputation, as being, foremost, out for himself.” Specter’s basic message, though, is one of concern. “The vitriol and hatred on all sides is overwhelming,” he writes, and from a man overwhelmed by heightened partisanship, the warning carries the weight of experience. (Mar.)