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Tergiversate (verb) – to abandon a party or cause

Representative Parker Griffith is a freshman senator from the state of Alabama. This week, less than a year into his first term, Rep. Griffith tergiversated from the Democratic Party to join the Republican Party. It is unusual, but not unheard of, for a politician on the national stage to switch parties while in office. Arlen Specter did it earlier this year.
The big difference is that Specter switched from the minority party to the majority – a move that brought the potential for rewards to be handed down from the party leadership that controls the Senate. Specter’s switch gave the Democrats the filibuster-proof majority that they needed to push through things like… oh… the health care bill.

Griffith went from the majority to the minority. His move did nothing to change the balance of power in the House, where Democrats still hold a 257-178 majority. So solid is the Democrat’s majority that Griffith can’t even anticipate that the GOP will regain power in the next election. There just doesn’t seem to be any personal upside for Griffith.

Which brings me to my point. Could Griffith have made the move because he is convinced that the Republican Party better represents the ideals that are best for the country? Could a politician in Washington actually have done – gasp – the right thing without regard for his personal gain?

I don’t know much about Rep. Griffith. I don’t live in Alabama. His name hasn’t come up for doing anything spectacularly good or bad during his brief stint in office. I just can’t help but wonder if this is a rare case of one of our elected representatives putting principle first.

Of course, the Republicans will trumpet the move as such. Just as obviously, the Democrats will try to paint the move as being somehow self-serving. Each party will take the opposite of the stance they took on Arlen Specter’s tergiversation less than a year ago. And so the finger pointing and blame game will continue unabated. But maybe, just maybe, this one time I can believe that it was the principle of the thing.