Pat Toomey

Erick Erickson is right.

Let’s be honest. One of the reasons the left is so head over heels in love with the online left is because of the moonbat ability to turn on the cash. [...] [I]f we want to be taken seriously, we need to step up to the plate.

As he says, "the establishment of the Republican Party will keep ignoring us" until the online Right has a tangible impact on the measurable metrics of politics: messaging, mobilization and money.

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The DC insiders are in a mood from bemused angst to irrational frustration over Arlen Specter's decision to switch teams in the middle of the game. Much of the ill will is based on the theory that Specter's hand was forced by the likes of Pat Toomey and various fi-cons who ran him out.

While this makes for a good story, it is fundamentally flawed.  Specter's apotasy on fiscal conservativism did seal his fate; but a close reading of poll results indicate that it wasn't a cabal of conservative power brokers that doomed Arlen Specter, it was an uncontrollable revolt of the Republican peasantry.

I'm a numbers guy and the March Quinnipiac poll  is pretty conclusive in my book.

Specter was polling at only 27% in the ballot test for a Republican primary, and Toomey was at 41%. But Toomey only had 26% statewide name recognition among Republicans.

So 1/3 of Toomey's vote against Specter were folks who didn;t have an opinion about who he was.!

That isn't a vote ginned up for Toomey, or even a vote for his agenda. It's a pure repudiation of Specter.

Specter's favorable/unfavorable ratio deteriorated badly from November 2008.  That's the stimulus vote. Pure and simple. 53% of Republicans in PA decided Specter didn't deserve another term.

So, how exactly is this Pat Toomey's problem again?

Had Pat Toomey not run, some lesser known Republican candidate would have found this dry kindling and lit the same fire under Specter.    Think about Ned Lamont, or Al D'Amato.

The British SAS has a mantra --"Who Dares, Wins".

Had Jim Gerlach or Pat Meehan or Tom Corbett jumped into this race ahead of Toomey, they might well be the GOP nominee-in-waiting. But they deferred to seniority, unwisely in retrospect.  They --or some other less conservative candidate--might oppose Toomey. The DC GOP would be well advised to quit while it's behind and let Keystone State Republicans sort this out.

The Beltway GOP is irrelevant as per Scott Rasmussen.

To be relevant in politics, you need either formal power or a lot of people willing to follow your lead. The governing Republicans in the nation’s capital have lost both on their continuing path to irrelevance.

"Yeah, it's a traversty the actual voters we represent don't appreciate the great talents of Arlen Specter and want to vote for a fiscal conservative, and let "electability" be dammed"

If the Beltway Republicans screw around here any more, they will only make matters worse and embarass themslves.

 Besides, my read on the Q poll is to the extent Specter has support among non-Republicans, it's awful soft---his re-elect and "hard" ballot tests aren;t great. Think "liked, not well liked". He may not hold up well over the next 18 months.

I saw what happened to Joe Lieberman once a Democratic challenger put him on trial for supporting the Iraq war.  Think this won't happen to the pro-war Specter in a primary?  

96 % of PA Democrats viewed George W. Bush unfavorably before the 2008 election.

Who endorsed Specter in 2004?

What primary is Specter running in again?

I dunno. Why can't Toomey or another competent Republican beat Joe Sestak or that Torrella dude? 

 Here's some advice to our party "leadership". How about backing candidates your members actually want to vote for?

I can't really express much outrage over Sen. Arlen Specter's decision to change his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.  He grew up as a Democrat, but became a Republican in the mid-1960s to run for Philadelphia District Attorney.  Specter is the archtype of the career politician.  For better or for worse, he sticks his finger in the air and determines his beliefs on that basis.  So I really don't care about the whole psychological drama of what Arlen Specter is thinking any given moment, because he is usually reacting, not thinking (this can be for good or for bad, by the way).

What I care more about is what this means.  It's certainly not everyday that a United States Senator changes their party.  It is big news when it occurs, and deservedly so.  You expect a senator to be among the strongest partisans in the country.  If that's not the case, we should examine what this means.

What I am most interested in is whether Specter's ideological orientation will change.  I don't think he has any real ideological beliefs, but it should be worth watching if he stays in the middle like he was as a Republican, or he will pull a Jim Jeffords, going from a moderate to a down the line liberal.  If he stays the same, the change is pretty meaningless.  If he shifts left, then it is a real loss for conservatives.

Of course, this clears the way for Democrats to have a Parliamentary style power.  If they get 60 votes to invoke cloture (Franken will be a Senator soon), then there will be no real check on whatever Democrats want to do.  There hasn't been this sort of undivided control since the Great Society Congress in 1965-66.  We could expect the modern equivalent of the passage of Great Society legislation.

This does have real significance because it speaks to a concern about the Republican Party in 2009: How can it have any reach beyond the conservative base?  I'm a conservative.  I don't need to be convinced to vote Republican.  But I realize that I am not like most people.  The majority of Americans will consider voting for both parties to some degree.  In the past 4-5 years, the persuadable majority have been persuaded to stay away from Republicans in masse.  I think the reason for this is the failure of the conservative movement under the Bush Presidency.  It may take us a while to get beyond what Jon Henke quite accurately termed a movement failure.