Senator Arlen Specter’s party switch last week rekindled the long-smoldering debate about the Republican party’s future. For many, his high-profile defection is more evidence that the GOP is destined for a fiery demise. It’s part of what Real Clear Politics writer Jay Cost describes as “the GOP is a shrinking, pathetic rump” meme that dominates the media. Consider what E.J. Dionne Jr. argued recently in the Washington Post: “Republicans’ continued rightward drift is putting the party at odds with a moderate to liberal mood that pervades the country almost everywhere outside the Deep South.”

Yet others, like Newsweek’s Jon Meacham, maintain that America is still an ideologically “center-right” country, despite recent Democratic electoral gains. Both perspectives suffer from a common fallacy: thinking all Americans share a common ideological thought process. This view assumes all voters place the entire political world on a single, left-right spectrum and support candidates and parties closest to themselves on this hypothetical scale. They don’t–or at least many do not. Instead, they view electoral choices through a less ideological prism. For them, electoral choice transcends ideology. Understanding this fact helps explain the recent Democratic surge and Republican decline in what many still describe as a center-right country.