Outgoing Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA,) used his last day in the Senate to savage the leadership of the Republican Party, which he left in 2009.

Specter Hits GOP “Cannibalism” in Goodbye Speech

In a farewell speech on the Senate floor today, departing Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said members of the GOP who backed Tea Party candidates over establishment Republicans this year engaged in “a form of sophisticated cannibalism.”

The 80-year-old Specter, who has served in the Senate for more than three decades, said he was offering “not a farewell address but rather a closing argument.” He complained that members of the Senate had grown too ideological for the good of the legislative body.

“Collegiality can obviously not be maintained when negotiating with someone simultaneously out to defeat you - especially within your own party,” he said. “In some quarters, ‘compromising’ has become a dirty word. Some senators insist on ideological purity as a precondition.”