Al Franken is liable to surprise and disappoint a lot of people who expect him to be the cut-up of the Senate Class of 2008.

That applies both to liberals who would like to see him unsheath the rhetorical sledgehammer he often applied to conservative icons such as George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter, and to conservatives who envision Franken reverting to shtick and embarrassing the Democrats in Washington and back in Minnesota.

The clue here is the very sober demeanor that Franken projected virtually throughout his Senate campaign, his first bid for public office after many years of backing liberal causes.

After more than 230 years of nationhood, you would think that our politics would have run out of new wrinkles. But listening to Republicans and other critics outraged over Arlen Specter's jump to the Democratic Party, you might conclude that the Pennsylvania senator just invented the idea of party-switching in the service of self-advancement.

Of course, that's not true. Not by a long shot.

One of the most unintentionally funny reactions to Specter's political bombshell came in a fundraising e-mail sent out last week by the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's campaign arm. The pitch was aimed at raising money to elect more House Republicans to counteract a Democratic-dominated Senate (a missive that also underscored the fact that there is hardly any event, whether good or bad for a party, that cannot be parlayed into a fundraising opportunity).