I guess I was supposed to be surprised by Arlen Specter’s announcement earlier this week that he was eschewing the political party he’d called home for his five terms in the U.S. Senate in favor of a seat on the other side of the aisle.

Well, I wasn’t really. In fact, I think it’s about time he came out of the political closet.

There is, of course, much talk about the timing of the senator’s announcement. Up for his sixth term in office, he is facing opposition from within his own party in the form of the much more conservative Pat Toomey, a man who has already garnered support from Specter’s Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill.

Not to mention the fact that his Pennsylvanian constituents have gotten a bit “bluer” in recent years. (His approval rating among Republicans in his home state is only something like 30 percent.)

“I’m not prepared to have my 29-year record in the U.S. Senate decided by Pennsylvania Republicans in the primary electorate,” Specter said on Tuesday. I can’t help thinking that’s no way to talk about the people that kept him in Washington for nearly 3 decades, but who am I to judge. I’m not from the Keystone State.

And swapping sides right now, with Democrats so very close to reaching the golden number of senate seats required to effectively shut out the (rapidly shrinking) minority, Specter will himself be golden among Washington’s Democratic elite. It’s been reported that he’s met with the Vice President more than a dozen times in the last few weeks, and President Obama not only welcomed him into his new party with open arms but also stated his personal support for Specter. (You better believe that will go a long way toward winning over Democratic voters in the next election.)

Maybe it is a matter of political survival. Specter could see a possible defeat on the horizon and at the same time felt the lure of hanging with the popular crowd. But I’ve always thought that if someone talks like a Democrat and votes like a Democrat, they’re probably a Democrat; no matter how hard they try to pass themselves off as a Republican.