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Senator Arlen Specter hasn't really switched parties; he's simply realized he cannot win the Pennsylvania Republican primary election.

I sometimes think that I didn't leave the Republican Party, as much as it left me.

I didn't want to engage in a campaign where I was defending myself on those issues at every turn, so I just decided that I'd switch and run as a Republican.

Well, the tough thing for them is that the Republican primary is pretty far over to the right, just as the Democratic primary is further over to the left than the average voter in each party.

When the Republicans controlled the House from 1994 -2006, Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Henry Waxman Charlie Rangel, John Conyers and Rahm Emanuel weren't saying we need to move right to win. They stuck to their philosophy. And they fought against Reagan and they fought against the Bushes. And eventually they did win.

I grew up in a Texas where people would say, 'I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me.' Now, the reverse is happening. People are leaving the Republican Party because the Republican Party is going too far to the right in Texas. And that's a source of great potential support for Democrats.

I chose the Republican Party early on in the 1950s and 1960s in Massachusetts. My father was a Republican, as was my mother, in Virginia.

I am very much a Republican.

I've been watching and involved in presidential politics since 1960 when I first voted, and the Republican, the conservative candidate in the primary is always going to lean right and come back to the center for the general - the opposite for the Democrat.