My gut reaction upon reading it was, “Yep, probably would have. They don’t call him Benedict Arlen for nothing.” But would he really have crossed the aisle on this? I know, I know, he voted for the stimulus, but so did Snowe and Collins and even they were afraid to buck the party line on an issue that made the base as red hot as ObamaCare. And unlike Specter, they’re not facing reelection this year. Would a guy who’s cynical and opportunistic enough to switch parties in the interest of saving his own ass have been cynical and opportunistic enough to vote against a bill he liked purely in the interests of … saving his own ass?

Sure. Which means, even here, he’s lying:

“My vote would have been the same,” Specter said in response to reader questions in a video series with the Montgomery County Times Herald. “As you know from my record, I frequently crossed party lines when I was on the other side of the aisle.”…

Specter said his record in the past was consistent on healthcare, pointing to his work on funding the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and his vote in favor of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), among other things, as examples.

“I would have voted for the healthcare bill,” the senator explained. “I have long been active from my position as chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on Health and Human Services on healthcare issues.”

Funny thing: A month ago, before O-Care passed, he led Pat Toomey by seven points. A month later, Toomey leads by five, with voters more likely to vote against a candidate who backed the bill by a margin of 39/20. Frankly, if not for Sestak’s primary challenge from the left and Specter’s dependence upon the White House for campaign support, I wonder if he would have looked at the polling and considered voting against O-Care even as a Democrat.

Here he is yesterday at Penn State thanking the College Republicans for their endorsement. Problem one: It was the College Democrats, of course, not the Republicans. Problem two: They didn’t endorse him. Retire, Arlen.