Specter made it pretty clear why he was doing this. In his first press conference on the matter, he said that his electoral prospects in the Republican primary looked "very bleak." When a politician says that about his own prospects, you can be sure that the numbers looked far worse than that. And he said that he did not want to put his 29 years of service on the line with only the Republican primary voters to judge whether he could serve for another six years. So yes, he definitely did this to survive.

However, he was also correct in saying that the Republican party is different now than it was in the past. The balanced budget, small government republican party of which he was a member exists only in name. And he specifically talked about groups on the far right, such as the Club for Growth, that is trying to purge the party of its more moderate members. So although this move was done so he could live to fight another day, it is also true that he is not a true believer of the current Republican party's principles, and he may be more aligned with the Democrats.

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