In a newly released excerpt of his new book Never Give In, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) writes about the primary challenge he faced four years ago next month from Rep. Pat Toomey (R). Nachama Soloveichik of the Club for Growth blog takes umbrage, particularly because Specter seems to be subtly blaming Toomey for his cancer -- but the passage is not nearly so whiny as that. Even though I've heard (and grimaced at) Specter's perspective on the race many times, I enjoyed reading it. I covered the Specter-Toomey race long ago for Human Events. Toomey nearly won, and I still wish he had. But an interesting footnote is that the surprisingly close election made Specter far more aware of his need to make friends with conservatives -- it is not something he really acknowledges in the excerpt, but his subsequent actions suggest it. Although not a conservative, he proved to be arguably as good a Senate Judiciary chairman as conservatives could have ever hoped for, successfully confirming two excellent Supreme Court picks and a number of appeals court judges. Recall, in particular, his smackdown of Sen. Ted Kennedy during one of the Alito sessions. He even played a major role in torpedoing Harriet Miers (he had to have known what he was doing when he announced that she'd taken a stand in favor of the Griswold decision). His later appearances at CPAC and his improved advocacy on taxes (take, for example, his recent and almost-successful amendment on cutting the AMT) have been quite welcome. No one could possibly have known this at the time, but Specter's victory was not as disastrous as conservatives (including myself) had feared. The incident offers two lessons: First, Toomey did an invaluable service to conservatives by running, even if he lost, because Specter at least slightly changed his attitude afterward. And second, nothing is ever as bad as it seems in politics -- nor (I would add) is it ever as good as it seems.