Saturday, October 16, 2010
Toomey's Time in Pennsylvania
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Once painted as a renegade in moderate Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey is finding that his once-spurned conservative message is now resonating across the heartland of the Keystone State. As a result, the Republican nominee is leading in the polls and imperiling the Democrats’ hold on the US Senate.
His opponent is a rebel himself. US Representative Joseph Sestak has rebuked fellow Democrats, bucked White House requests that he not run for Senate, and bumped the party favorite, Senator Arlen Specter, from the race in the Democratic primary.
As this battle of insurgents enters its final days, Sestak is struggling to make up ground.
I didn't know these guys were fighting against U.S. troops.
An average of recent public polls aggregated by the website Real Clear Politics shows Toomey with an 8-point lead over Sestak, at roughly 48 percent to 40....
Toomey, a former congressman and veteran campaigner, has proven to have a thick political hide. Last week, he ventured into a working-class Latino neighborhood in North Philadelphia, for a campaign appearance at a Latin restaurant with the governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Fortuno.
You know, the guys who are not going to show up for Democrats this year.
The candidate was stone-faced as he passed through about 25 protesters, mostly of Puerto Rican descent and many of whom were shouting, “Get out of my neighborhood!’’
Hostile hospitality! Good thing they are not white.
Toomey later shrugged off the demonstration. “Some people are not as familiar with what I really stand for,’’ he said.
What Toomey wants to be known for is a philosophy that is friendly to business and hostile to taxes and the government. In an election season heavy with anxiety over the economy and a mistrust of government, Toomey could hardly have gotten a more favorable political climate in which to run....
Toomey has run an ad pairing Sestak with an unflattering photograph of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while accusing Sestak of voting “in lockstep with the extreme agenda of bailouts, debt, government health care, and job killing energy taxes.’’
Related: First Female Speaker Failed
Sestak is fighting back with his own definition of extreme. In a television advertisement, he paints Toomey as a fanatical conservative, using a video clip of Toomey bragging that his congressional voting record “is pretty much indistinguishable from Rick Santorum’s,’’ a reference to the socially conservative former Pennsylvania senator defeated in a landslide in 2006.
That was then; this is now.
Don't you Democrats realize the destruction of economy by the fraud of banking system piled on top of all the war lies has changed the political realities in this nation?
The key for Sestak to win next month is simple: Wake up the Democratic base.
Ha!
Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 1 million statewide — 4.3 million to 3.1 million — but have shown less enthusiasm about the election. The state has about 500,000 voters with no party affiliation. Independents are roughly split between the candidates, according to a Muhlenberg College poll released last week.
Sestak is confident he can get Democrats to the polls.
“The people of Pennsylvania are so commonsensical that they’re not going to be fooled by somebody who did the damage as a congressman and who gave birth to this recession,’’ Sestak insisted in an interview last week after a campaign speech in Harrisburg. “They’re not going to take this wolf in sheep’s clothing, they’re just not.’’
Yeah, that fell of Israel a while ago.
Sestak and Toomey each went to Harvard University, but the school could hardly have turned out two more different graduates, in style and in philosophy.
Oh, both trained by the elite global educators. Some choice.
Toomey, 48, is a former investment banker for Chemical Bank and the British firm Morgan Grenfell, who then joined his brothers as an owner of several sports pubs and restaurants. He challenged Specter in the 2004 Republican primary and nearly toppled the incumbent. After his loss, Toomey became head of an antitax political group, the Club for Growth.
Anyone else running?
The club supports conservative candidates by urging its members to make campaign donations, and by buying its own independent television ads. It has backed Republican primary challenges against party incumbents it deems not conservative enough, such as Specter and Senator Lincoln Chafee, a moderate from Rhode Island.
Under Toomey’s leadership in 2006, the club endorsed Chafee’s more conservative primary opponent, Steve Laffey, and attacked Chafee with television ads. Chafee survived the primary, but was weakened politically by the negative campaign and lost the seat to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in the general election.
On the campaign trail, Toomey is highly disciplined, sticking tightly to his economic talking points, relentlessly pounding a message of fiscal conservatism and slamming Democrats for deficits and too much government spending.
“We’ve got to rein in government; it’s too big,’’ agreed Toomey supporter Luis Vega, 48, of Philadelphia, who attended Toomey’s event in North Philadelphia last Friday. Vega’s children are about to graduate from college, and are thinking about starting a small business. “I’m concerned that their job outlook is bleak. And we support Pat’s message about supporting small business and creating jobs.’’
Sestak, 58, is much more folksy on the stump and more apt to ramble and ad-lib. He spent 31 years in the Navy, rising to the rank of admiral and commanding an aircraft carrier battle group after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
So the choice is between a banker and military man, huh? That's AmeriKan politics!!
Pennsylvania has more than 1 million veterans — more than all but four states — and Sestak’s military service is a key selling point.
“Me being a jarhead, I gotta go with the Navy guy,’’ said Sestak supporter Lynnwood Schultz, 62, a former Marine, and one of about 75 people who came to the state capitol building last week to hear Sestak speak under the building’s soaring gilded dome.
Anyone else running?
Is there an ANTIWAR PARTY on the BALLOT ANYWHERE?
Sestak peppers his populist speeches with promises to stick up for the middle class, and paints Toomey as a tool of Wall Street bigwigs.
The promises no longer work, Joe; too many broken ones.
As for Toomey they tool, the recent past has proved you are ALL TOOLS of that criminal cabal!
Sestak defied the wishes of his party and President Obama by challenging Specter in the Democratic primary, though he has supported the administration’s major initiatives: health care legislation, an overhaul of Wall Street regulations, and the economic stimulus program....
HOW DARE HE!?!?
Sestak’s campaign had billed his speech at the capitol as a commentary on foreign policy, though it inevitably turned to the issue that has dominated the campaign: the economy and its fitful recovery.
Related: In The Corner To My Left....
Quick Whisk Through Wisconsin
Is that why businesspeople are such strong challengers this time out?
“This election is a perfect referendum on the Obama administration and their recession fighting measures,’’ said G. Terry Madonna, a political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College.
That explains the coming losses.
The unemployment rate in Pennsylvania is 9.2 percent, just below the national rate of 9.6 percent.
With voters hurting and losing patience, there is little Sestak and his party can do in the next month to change the economy or the political climate, which this year favors Republicans. But the Democratic Party’s numerical advantages in the Keystone State offer Sestak a possible vehicle to overcome the GOP’s edge.
If Democrats “can turn out anything reasonable from their own ranks, they’re going to be much more competitive than they are now,’’ said Christopher Borick, a pollster and political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown.
Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Bill Clinton have all stumped for Democrats in the state recently, appearing in urban areas and college towns packed with young voters who turned out for Obama in 2008, and who could decide the outcome of this year’s race, either by voting or by staying home.
Youth forgets, youth doesn't stick with it, youth is even more disappointed and hurt by the lack of change than I.
--more--"
Repuglicans pluck Pennsylvania Senate seat in a fair election.
