I think Michael Bloomberg is another one who uses political parties (or being 'independent') for his own personal gain.

As much as I want another Dem seat there is something so unsavory about the switchy-ness of these jerks. They would throw their mother under a bus for a vote and scruples be damned. I'd love to see the 3 of them run out of politics once and for all. Esp Bloomberg who is all about Michael Bloomberg.

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If that were accurate -- if a person who'd been supremely loyal to one party for 50 years randomly changed his affiliation in the face of bad poll numbers -- then it would be a baldly cynical ploy worthy of Chris' (and everyone's) rage.

But Specter hasn't been a loyal Republican. That's the reason he got in trouble with the GOP in the first place. He wasn't loyal when they made it a de facto party position that the stimulus = socialism. He wasn't loyal when Reagan tried to force-feed Robert Bork down our throats. He has never been loyal on abortion votes. The truth is, for "nearly a half century" he's been somewhere between both parties. His ideology has truly been in the middle. Republicans, especially national Republicans, never liked him.

This is not the sudden abandonment of principle that Matthews is crying about. Yes, the polls vs. Toomey were the proximate cause of Specter's switch. But, if Specter had been a truly loyal Republican through the years, then (a)Toomey would never have been challenging him in the first place and Specter's ability to win the 2010 GOP primary would never have been an issue; and (b) Democrats wouldn't have been urging him to switch for all these years.

Let's not pretend this is the equivalent of Mario Cuomo waking up tomorrow and calling himself a Reagan conservative. Specter as a Democrat makes a lot more ideological sense than that.

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