Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Pat Toomey’
August 10th, 2012 at 12:39 pm
Romney Should be Worried, But Not Panicked

So says Nate Silver, in this bit of superb analysis.

Also via Silver, Bob McDonnell gets a huge boost, and Tim Pawlenty a HUGE downer, from this analysis. (I discount the Portman boost also in here, because this measures ONLY home-state effects of the Veep choice. My contention is that Portman helps at home, but hurts EVERYwhere else, at least a little, because of the combo of his multiple Bush ties and because of his wealthy son of wealthy son status. For that matter, I also give bonus points to Christie and Jindal for NON-home-state effects: I think Christie helps across the Rust Belt on style points alone — and perhaps especially in Pennsylvania, because it shares some media markets with New Jersey, plus can take the fight to Obama in what has turned into the vilest, most vicious race in history — while Jindal helps thematically by allowing Romney to better make the election a referendum on ObamaCare, because Jindal can offer and explain positive alternatives to it.)

The other guy who I’ve touted all along among my top five picks is Pat Toomey. It baffles me that he hasn’t gotten more attention. Silver’s analysis (see his very last chart) shows Toomey quite high among all the possibilities in terms of the actual likelihood that his choice alone could swing the election. He also risks almost no down-side, and his balanced-budget plan doesn’t risk anything that could be demagogued as “slashing” Social Security and Medicare.

Food for thought!

August 10th, 2011 at 3:11 pm
Savvy McConnell Names Terrific Trio to Super Committee

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) earned his position today by naming three conservative workhorses to represent the Senate GOP in the new “Super Congress” charged with eliminating more than $1 trillion in federal spending.

Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) is getting the lion’s share of attention because of his former leadership of the conservative Club for Growth, and his opposition to the debt deal that created the committee he’ll serve on.  But McConnell deserves some serious thanks from the Tea Party for also naming Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Rob Portman (R-OH).

Both Kyl and Portman own reputations as serious policy wonks who know how to get substantial conservative victories in government negotiations.  (Kyl is an expert on foreign affairs, defense, and tax issues, while Portman served as President George W. Bush’s OMB Director and Free Trade Representative.)

For his part, Toomey is no slouch when it comes to putting skins on the wall.  (Under Toomey, Club for Growth helped illuminate the economic records of several Republican candidates, helping to identify which were in line with less government.)

All told, the Tea Party should be very pleased that Leader McConnell has named a terrific trio to grow the federal government down in a smart and lasting way.

June 27th, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Tea Party Clash with GOP Establishment Will Continue in 2012
Posted by Print

You would’ve thought that the leaders of the National Republican Senatorial Committee — the Senate GOP caucus’s in-house mechanism for supporting candidates for the upper chamber — would have learned their lesson in 2010. Rather than waiting for Republican nominees to emerge before throwing their support behind them, the NRSC intervened in primaries throughout the nation, opposing such strong conservative candidates as Florida’s Marco Rubio and Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey. It should have been a source of public shame. Yet it doesn’t look that way, based on a report in the New York Times’ Caucus Blog:

A group of placard-waving Tea Party activists converged on the headquarters of the National Republican Senatorial Committee early Monday afternoon, demanding that its leaders refrain from supporting incumbents facing primary challenges, and serving as a reminder that the intraparty fight over party purity continues…

One reason the activists are angry with the Republican senatorial committee is that it is holding fund-raisers for [Utah Senator Orrin] Hatch — they waved signs reading “Retire Hatch.” But more generally, they want the committee to withhold political or financial support from any incumbents in the primary.

“It’s like they haven’t learned the lessons of the midterms,” said Brendan Steinhauser, an organizer for FreedomWorks who urged on the marchers.

And indeed, the committee has heard this tune before, particularly in the 2010 Florida primary for United States Senate, when the committee initially backed Charlie Crist, then a popular Republican governor, over a scrappy challenger, Marco Rubio. Mr. Rubio did so well in polls that Mr. Crist abandoned the party, ran as an independent, and lost, badly, to Mr. Rubio, a Tea Party darling.

Of the 47 Republicans currently serving in the United States Senate, none is as likely to someday become president as Marco Rubio. And his ascendancy was nearly extinguished at the hands of the NRSC. If that isn’t a sign that they shouldn’t be weighing in during primaries, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

April 20th, 2011 at 2:53 pm
Club for Growth to Lugar: Retire

Roll Call says Club for Growth President Chris Chocola is readying his group for another take-down effort of a moderate GOP senator.

Chocola, a former Congressman from Indiana who served in the House from 2003 to 2007, told ABC’s “Top Line” that his fiscally conservative organization is considering getting involved in Lugar’s 2012 re-election campaign in the Hoosier State. The club has already met with Lugar’s primary opponent, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R).

Club for Growth already helped scare former Senator Arlen Specter into switching parties rather than face one-time CG president Pat Toomey in a primary.  Specter wound up losing the Democratic nomination to former Rep. Joe Sestak.  Toomey ultimately prevailed in the general election.

With Lugar’s (lack of) residency in Indiana and tutelage of President Barack Obama likely to become campaign issues, Indiana just might elect a conservative the rest of America deserves.

October 26th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Poll Numbers Continue to Show Massive Pick-Up for GOP

Jay Cost at The Weekly Standard makes a compelling case that one of the reasons a Republican victory next Tuesday may seem ho-hum is that its arrival has been trumpeted for so long.  After months of voter resentment over ObamaCare, the Recovery Act, and spiraling unemployment the notion that the GOP might surpass 1994’s gains can seem pedestrian.

Cost reminds us it isn’t.  In fact, the intensity and location of voter resentment towards the liberal status quo could portend a possible realignment in states President Barack Obama won in 2008 to the GOP column.

The circumstantial evidence in favor of this? As Jim Geraghty’s Obi Wan noted yesterday, it’s all around us.  We simply have gotten used to it. Ohio is all but gone for the Democrats, including the swingiest of swing districts in Columbus.  Michigan is a lost cause. So is liberal icon Russ Feingold in Wisconsin.  Pennsylvania looks like it will go maybe +4-6 for Toomey and Corbett. All of these places voted for Obama, and all of them are basically gone. Weak Republican candidates in Colorado and Nevada keep those races tight, but otherwise the toss-ups are: California, Illinois, West Virginia, and Washington. The last Republican presidential candidate to win all four of these? Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Whoever earns the GOP presidential nomination for 2012 will have the wind at their back and a groundswell of proven precinct walkers at the ready.  We’ll see if the candidate can figure out how to use them.

September 18th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Pundits Can’t See the Tea Party Forest for the O’Donnell Trees
Posted by Print

It’s nearly a week later, but on this Sunday talk show-eve we can be guaranteed that tomorrow’s beltway chatter will be dominated by talk of Christine O’Donnell’s upset of Mike Castle in the GOP senate primary in Delaware. To save you the pain of sitting through Meet the Press, This Week, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday and CNN’s State of the Union, here are the basic talking points you’re going to hear all morning: O’Donnell’s win proves that Tea Party radicals are taking over the GOP, ruining their chances for a majority this year and imperiling the long-term existence of the party.

Put aside the obvious bias of these remarks (remember how two years ago the GOP was imperiled because it was losing? Now apparently it’s imperiled because it’s winning). The truth is a lot more complicated.

It’s undoubtedly true that O’Donnell’s nomination makes it much likelier that Democrats will retain the Delaware seat that used to be held by Joe Biden. Delaware is a solidly blue state and O’Donnell’s deep Republican red — regardless of her virtues or vices — is never going to play as well as Castle’s fuschia statewide.

The Tea Party’s stated goal, however — moving the Republican party closer to the principles of small government — is on track for success in most of its other contested senate races throughout the country. Ken Buck in Colorado, Mike Lee in Utah, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, and Marco Rubio in Florida are among the Tea Party-backed candidates who appear on track for victory. Joe Miller in Alaska is a strong bet too, though Lisa Murkowski’s misbeggoten attempt at a write-in candidacy may tighten that race. Only Nevada’s Sharron Angle presents similar difficulties to O’Donnell, but on a far narrower basis. As of this writing, she’s polling essentially even with Harry Reid.

But there’s an even bigger misperception at work here. Since pundits only discovered a few weeks ago that Republicans had a shot at taking over the senate, they were able to put their Prozac back in the medicine cabinet with the O’Donnell win. This is a mistake. For while Delaware may have just slipped out of reach, two seats that were not previously part of the electoral calcuation are now in play.

The first is in Connecticut, where former WWE CEO Linda McMahon has pulled within five points of the supposedly invincible Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. The second is West Virginia, where the seat formerly held by Robert Byrd was expected to be an easy win for Democratic Governor Joe Manchin. However, industrial executive John Raese has closed the gap to within five points as well. Given the strong conservative turnout expected this year, these could both be sleepers come election night.

Don’t despair, conservative America. We’re just getting started.

August 23rd, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Republican Chuck Hagel Backs Democrat Joe Sestak’s Senate Bid

Finally, some above-the-fray bipartisanship!  Tomorrow former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) will support Congressman Joe Sestak’s (D-PA) bid to enter the body Hagel once inhabited.  On the surface, the endorsement can be rationalized.  Both men served in the military (Hagel in the Army, Sestak in the Navy), and neither could be confused with a strong ideological commitment to forceful shows of American power.

However, there’s probably something more to Hagel’s otherwise ineffectual endorsement.  (He is virtually unknown to Pennsylvania voters, and his refusal to back Republican Pat Toomey won’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Hagel’s moderate record.)  With Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates (another middle-of-the-road-Republican) retiring at the end of next year, look for Hagel to get extra attention to replace him.

Here’s the take from Chris Cizilla of the Washington Post:

On the other hand, there could be genuine benefit for Hagel — albeit symbolic. Hagel is rightly understood as trying out for a Cabinet job and the more he can show a willingness to put party aside to do what he believes is the right thing, the more attractive he will be to President Obama and his inner circle.

It will be interesting to see if — and where — Hagel chooses to insert himself between now and Nov. 2 and what benefit, if any, he accrues in the eyes of the White House for those endorsements.

Funny how the “right thing” in this scenario is calculated to boost Hagel’s chances at landing one of the most important jobs in the United States government.  Hey, we can’t all be political martyrs – right, Pat Toomey?

April 8th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
The Persistence of Pat Toomey

Six years ago, then Rep. Pat Toomey (R-PA) angered the GOP establishment by running against incumbent Republican Senator Arlen Specter in the primary.  Toomey lost, in no small part to conservative GOP Senator Rick Santorum’s support for the very liberal Specter.  Since then, Specter won and switched parties, Santorum was defeated by Democrat Bob Casey, Jr., and Toomey ran the Club for Growth.

Now, Toomey is the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee to knock off Specter in this year’s general election while Santorum nurses plans for a presidential run in 2012.  With Toomey outpolling Specter and Santorum counting on conservatives like Toomey to make him electorally viable, it’s nice to see a limited government politician winding up in the driver’s seat.

August 13th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Toomey Leading Specter in PA Senate Race
Posted by Print

Former Representative Pat Toomey is leading Senator Arlen Specter 48% to 36%, according to a new Rasmussen poll.  The election is still over a year away but incumbents who poll under 40% eventually have their titled preceded by “former.”