"Souter's current position on the left wing of the court owes much more to movement by the court and the country than to any lurch on his part. The current court, after all, has seven Republican appointees and has been on a steady rightward drift since the Reagan years. The Republican Party has, too. I think Souter is indeed in many ways a Republican; it's just that his sort of Republican no longer really exists."
This expresses precisely the reason I left the Republican Party after my full adult political lifetime (as well as much of my childhood and adolescence). Those of us in the Teddy Roosevelt or Eisenhower vein of the party have been more than marginalized. I suspect this played a huge role in Senator Specter's change of venue, especially following his vilification for his stimulus vote.
The reason I joined the Democratic Party was Mr. Obama, in the interests of full disclosure.
Justice Souter will be missed as a man whom nobody doubts to have done always what he thought was right on a case by case basis, rather than being overridden by his own sense of ideology. Farewell, sir. You've certainly earned your retirement.
