Posted on 11/20/2016 1:15:27 PM PST by ChessExpert
If Republicans could merge the two approaches, they could continue to win demographically changing swing states.
Two of the most consequential elections of 2016 took place among the same voters in the same state. Pennsylvania effectively put Donald Trump over the top of the 270 electoral-college votes needed to win the presidency, and Pat Toomey’s reelection helped secure a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate for at least another two years.
Both of these results were remarkable. Trump succeeded in a state where Bob Dole, George W. Bush (twice), John McCain, and Mitt Romney all failed. Toomey won a second term, despite having more money spent against him than any Senate candidate in U.S. history.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Trump won his way while having entire party against him. Toomey won by being a squish against a weak candidate. He also had the power of incumbency and local connections. This strategy is a losing one nationally.
Completely different situations, and this is coming from someone whose political ancestry runs through Chester County. My great-grandfather was a county commissioner there, and my grandmother was an unbound GOP delegate to the 1976 convention. The county is full of Rockefeller/Bush/Romney Republicans. Whereas Trump won PA by pulling in Reagan Democrats who think little of down-state country-club Republicans.
Please, 4 years. 2018 is not the year for liberals to retake the senate. It is even possible they'll lose seats even before the election by one changing sides.
plenty of potential GOP voters do not see the big picture. Low info voters?
Best thing Toomey had going FOR him was McSquinty. I HATE having to hold my nose when voting.
Toomey and Trump ran in Pennsylvania as if they were on different tickets -- and it worked. Trump won PA by getting a lot of votes from Democrats would probably would never have voted for Toomey.
The GOP should study this PA election cycle closely and take a lot of lessons from it. The results of these two races were a successful balancing act that I honestly didn't think was possible. Unbelievable as it may seem, I started to get more confident about Toomey's chances of holding his seat once he quietly distanced himself from Trump (he didn't oppose him, but instead ran his campaign as if Trump didn't exist). That told me he had a very good sense of what his constituents were thinking, even though I would have preferred to see both of these candidates on the stage together at all of Trump's rallies.
The goal should be to turn blue collar democrats to republicans. They need to get back to church and community. They do that in the rust belt and democrats never win another election.
Its laughable that the never trumpers are now trying to claim that the squish way works too. Using wins by Toomey Rubio Johnson and Portman while knowing that running a local Senate race (as incumbent) in your HOME state is different than running a national campaign for POTUS.
I think you are both right in your own way. McGinty was a horrible candidate for the Dems - if they had a better candidate, Toomey might have lost. Toomey played to the country-club pubbies in the Philly burbs who otherwise disliked Trump, and Trump played to the Reagan Dems in the rest of the state who dislike country-club pubbies. There are enough of both to run an inside straight and win.
I agree with you, but let's keep something in mind. The biggest challenge with this approach is that white blue-collar Democrats are probably one of the older demographic groups in the U.S. today. Between economic forces and demographic changes, you'll find that more and more blue-collar jobs today are being done by recent immigrants. It's going to be an interesting balancing act to make this work.
Very informative!
I always think of York as the city, forgetting it is a large county.
And I had no idea how large a Republican base there was there.
Ain’t that the honest truth? Have you ever seen a candidate as vapid as Katie? I told people that I thought they were both Wall Street stooges, but I was voting for Toomey because he was at least honest about it.
I voted for Toomey & Dent because their opponents were much worse. However, I lost all respect for them. When we went to see Mike Pence at the Hotel Bethlehem, Toomey & Dent didn’t show up. When we saw Ivanka in Bethlehem, they didn’t show up for that either. Hopefully, both of them will be primaried the next time around. I live in Northampton County, & our county went to Trump.
Keep in mind that there wasn't a single major poll in the last few weeks that showed Toomey winning this race. Most of them showed McGinty ahead, or listed the race as a toss-up.
As recently as six months ago it was almost universally accepted that the Democrats would win control of the U.S. Senate in this election cycle -- simply because 24 of the 34 seats that were contested this year were held by Republicans. The Democrats would have needed to pick up 4-5 Republican seats, depending on how the presidential race ended up. Toomey's seat would surely have been one of the ones that ended up in the Democrat column if this scenario came to fruition.
If the republican party leadership in Philadelphia weren’t paid off with patronage municipal positions and actually worked to grow the party and combat voter fraud by simply being present in city elections, Pennsylvania wouldn’t be nearly as purple as it has been.
I despise Toomey because of his gun grab but voted for him anyway, as I saw the bigger picture. SCOTUS etc.
One can only contemplate what would have gone down if this guy had won the Dem nomination:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fetterman_(politician)
He might have been a perfect candidate in an election year where an outlandish guy like Trump carried the day across the country.
Toomey didn’t get my vote, Trump did.
Toomey never will because of his repeated caves on the Second Amendment.
He played the notion of ‘security’ to voters as one of his issues.
Violating the Constitution is not my definition of ‘security’.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.