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If the Senate Republican caucus was “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” Mitch McConnell would be The Brains, John Ensign would be The Looks and Arlen Specter would be The Wild Card.

Sometimes Specter is a hard-core Republican. He went at Anita Hill like a wild dog during Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court hearings and he was mixed up in President Bush’s attorney dismissal scandal. At other times he’s been a liberal in conservative clothing. He criticized Republicans’ impeachment of Bill Clinton, was very publicly opposed to warrantless wiretapping, and dismissed talks of overturning Roe v. Wade.

But more often, Arlen Specter just goes with whatever crazy idea strikes him at the moment. While on the Warren Commission, he was instrumental in the creation of the single bullet theory. In 1998, he attempted to introduce Scottish law into the Clinton impeachment vote. Last year, he called for a congressional inquiry into the New England Patriots, on the basis that their Super Bowl victory over the Philadelphia Eagles was the result of spying. Even while undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma, he continued to go about his business like a badass Kojak of the Senate.

And today, Arlen Specter decided to stop being a Republican and start being a Democrat. Why?

[Specter] said he made the decision based on public and private polling in Pennsylvania that showed “the prospects for winning a Republican primary [in Pennsylvania] are bleak.”

Thank you, Arlen Specter, for being my Senator. You may slip in and out of sanity at times, but you’re always entertaining and you’re always honest.