I think this recent switch in Parties is both an upholding of our party system in the United States and a mockery of it. Is it really possible for a person to flip-flop with no true party loyalty just to keep his/her job? In general I think Fiorina would be irritated and Aldrich would not be surprised.
The whole idea behind the Culture War book was to emphasize the point that just because the elites in office are heavily polarized against each other, this does not mean that it is a clear representation of the voting public as a whole. Fiorina does not suggest party switching as a solution to the problem. He states that he believes most candidates sincerely believe they are at war. Specter is now choosing to fight
that war from a different side of the political fence. He is doing this mainly because he wants to keep his seat in the senate which brings me to Aldrich.
“The elective Office Seekers’ and holders’ interests are to win (Aldrich p. 24). Specter was very concerned about losing his senate seat and was “"unwilling to subject my 29-year record in the U.S. Senate to the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate," (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/29/specter.party.switch/index.html) Specter says that it is his ongoing disagreement with the right-shifting philosophies of the Republican party that play a big role in his decision to change, and that he will put people over party and be bipartisan, but I think that any comment after “don’t want to lose my seat in the senate” becomes far less believable as a main source. And what do the Democrats care? They are now one seat shy of being filibuster proof while they wait on Al Franken.
Answering the question of how something like this could happen in 2009 with such polarized elites is apparently pretty easy. For Arlen Specter it is not about fighting the political war as a loyalist for his team, it’s about being able to fight a war in general, and get paid for it. I cannot even pretend to draw the allusion that Specter is just a reflection of the voter and not really extreme on either side, he requested a transfer to a different team because he knew his own was not going to have him around the next year.
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I think Fiorina makes a convincing argument about the polarization of America. It is in fact the elites who have the most polarized opinions, not the average American citizen. But those in the media hang around and talk to these elites, so of course they're going to report that there is a "culture war" occuring in America, when actually, there's a "culture war" among elites.
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