Sen. Arlen SpecterâÄôs decision to join the Democratic caucus was purely a political ploy to be reelected. When moderate Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to Democrat last year to cast ballots for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, the Pennsylvania Republican Party electorate became filled with conservatives. Facing a difficult primary challenger in Pat Toomey and with an electorate outraged over his support for the stimulus bill and similar massive government expenditure legislation, Specter realized his career as a Republican senator was over in 2010. Living in a Philadelphia suburb, I am not at all surprised by such tactics from Specter, and neither are the locals. Specter has always been a senator whose first concern is his reelection. We should also not forget that Specter had been a Democrat for the first 15 years of his political career. SpecterâÄôs decision to become a Republican in 1965 came only after he lost in a bid for District Attorney in Philadelphia on the Democratic ticket. Changing political parties is nothing new for Specter âÄî he resorts to that option whenever his political party becomes an electoral liability. His decision to rejoin the Democratic Party does not imply anything about the acceptance of moderates in the Republican Party. Specter has always been a Democrat who had worn Republican suits for more than four decades, and his party switch amounts to nothing more than a political strategy for reelection. Sean Niemic University student