Mar 18 2009
Could Arlen Specter be Toast in 2010?
Every so often, the conservatives who make up the base of the Republican Party like to go hunting for RINOs – Republicans in Name Only. Many on the Right see these moderate-to-liberal members of the GOP as nothing more than donkeys in sheep’s clothing who take advantage of every opportunity to thwart the aims of the conservative movement by collaborating with the Democrats in Congress.
In Pennsylvania, legions of Right-wingers are out to bag the biggest RINO of them all – Sen. Arlen Specter. For many conservatives, the senator has long been a source of anger and frustration, but his vote for the Democrat-sponsored $787 billion stimulus package has proven to be the straw that broke the elephant’s back.
According to Deroy Murdock of Human Events, former Pennsylvania congressman Pat Toomey is considering challenging Specter in the 2010 GOP primary. Specter, 79, will be seeking his sixth consecutive term.
“I am very likely to make a run for the Senate,” says Toomey. “Specter’s vote was a profound betrayal of the Republican Party and conservative principles.”
Toomey, who served three terms in the House of Representatives, attempted to unseat Sen. Specter in the 2004 primary and came within 2 percentage points of achieving his goal. He received 49 percent of the vote to Specter’s 51 percent. Despite his liberal views on several key issues, the incumbent senator enjoyed the support of many of the GOP’s leading members in that contest, including then-President George W. Bush.
Many Republicans see Specter as an ingrate who always receives the backing of the Republican establishment in close races and then turns around and jabs his party in the collective eye by siding with Democrats on bills such as the gargantuan stimulus package.
“This stimulus bill is such a really outrageous lurch to the Left by the federal government,” Toomey told Murdock. “It’s not just a trillion dollars in spending. It is a huge expansion of government, undermining welfare reform, and staggering amounts of money to be borrowed. All of this could have been blocked. When the House Republicans voted this down, they empowered the Senate Republicans to demand real pro-growth tax cuts, less spending, and less of this terrible, liberal policy. President Obama would have had to agree, because he would have had no bill in the face of united Republican opposition. Instead, these three — Specter plus Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine — capitulated.”
While I understand why a lot of conservatives dislike Specter, as an Independent centrist, I don’t think the GOP and the state of
Pennsylvania should toss this guy out on the curb. If they do, America will have lost a great public servant. Fortunately for the wackos on the Right, no one listens to me.
In any case, Specter is probably going to be unemployed in two years, and not just because of Republican voters. According to a survey taken by James Lee of Susquehanna Polling and Research, 53 percent of Pennsylvania voters, along with 66 percent of Republicans, said they wanted a “new person” in the Senate.
If Toomey, who heads the conservative Club for Growth, chooses to face Specter in a rematch, he can expect to receive a deluge of support and donations from Republicans eager to dump the senator and get a more reliable conservative in the upper house. And if the general feeling of anger and fatigue among Pennsylvania voters toward Specter continues to hold in the next two years, Toomey won’t need a magic bullet to bring down this RINO.
Mr Magic Bullet needs to go get a real job.
“hey! just dropping by ^^ cool blog you have :D”
Thanks, pal. Same to you and your blog.
If Toomey beats Specter, he will undoubtedly lose, but I’m not sure that even Specter could win against a Democrat, as Pennsylvania has been trending that way since the early ’90s. It’s an interesting state because it’s the only one that i know of that is represented by a pro-choice Republican and a pro-life Democrat in the Senate.