Posted on 05/01/2004 5:03:08 AM PDT by Elkiejg
NRO: Is this your first interview since the election?
Rep. Pat Toomey: Yes it is.
NRO: Given that you lost, what do you think your campaign accomplished?
Toomey: Well I'm still sorting that out, Ramesh, and trying to figure out what if anything it accomplished. When you consider the obstacles we faced and how close we got, it makes it clear that there is a real interest in seeing the Republican party govern as a conservative party, certainly in Pennsylvania.
NRO: What does the campaign say about the strength of the conservative movement, most of its institutions having backed you?
Toomey: The vast majority of them were on my side but very much to varying degrees of involvement. The Club for Growth was terrific, very strong and very involved. Much of the conservative print media, led by National Review of course, was on my side. There were others: the Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Human Events.
NRO: Rush Limbaugh?
Toomey: I think to a large degree Rush sat out the race.
NRO: Looking back at the race, were there any mistakes you would avoid if you did it again?
Toomey: I really don't think we made any blunders, I don't think we made any significant mistakes in terms of allocating resources. Looking back, there might have been ways to more effectively exploit the Internet. But would it have made the difference in the race? It's hard to say. I have to tell you, I feel pretty good about how we ran the race. We had a lot of discipline in terms of our message. We had limited resources and we developed a strategy based on our resrouces and it came very close to working for us.
NRO: Why should your supporters vote for Specter?
Toomey: Well, the alternative is worse. Joe Hoeffel will never be with Republicans or conservatives on anything. That's number one, and number two: I think we're going to hold on to the Senate and probably grow our majority. Increasing the Republican majority is a good thing. Every Republican makes it harder for the Democrats to filibuster.
NRO: But given that so many conservatives wanted Specter out on Tuesday, and that he has been moving left since then, do you think Specter will be able to win the votes of your supporters?
Toomey: I don't know.
NRO: Do you have any hard feelings toward Santorum?
Toomey: (Pause.) No, not really. I haven't spoken with him in a while.
NRO: You didn't get a call from him after the primary?
Toomey: That's correct.
NRO: What does the future hold for Pat Toomey?
Toomey: I don't know. I really don't know. My wife and I are out on Block Island decompressing. I'm hoping to read a novel. In the next few weeks we'll start thinking about what to do next.
NRO: Any interest in running for governor in 2006?
Toomey: I haven't really given it any thought. Several people have started talking about it, but I just don't have any idea.
The most important vote Spector casts is for Bill Frist. Would you rather that the Penn. Senator vote for Tom Daschle?
I'm in Maine, and we're stuck with 2 RINOs. But you know what? I'm voting for Snowe and Collins when they're up again. Their vote for the Senate President outweighs smaller side issues.
The best way to combat RINOs is not to defeat them in liberal States, but to elect more conservatives in open seats. If we held a 58-42 majority in the Senate, then it won't matter what the Coalition of the Rinos want.
As long as it's 51-49 or 52-48, then they matter. At 58-42, they don't.
I've started by donating to Thune (to dump Daschle.) You should too.
Isn't there some way to keep Specter from taking over the chair at judiciary?
Sure vote for Joe Hoefel. Then you can get Pat Leahy as Judiciary Chairman and Daschle as Majority leader. If you had just worked a little harder for Toomey then Leahy would be a shoe in for the job.
Bush ran Liddy Dole down our throats here in NC. There was a good conservative running but he was pushed aside by Bush. Dole had not lived here in over 40 years and most galling of all, Dole was once a Lyndon Johnson cheerleader.
It is called political expediency. For what purpose??? Power and reelection. I supported Bush last time and voted for him, not this time.
The whining Bush supporters will be here saying the democrat is worse than Bush etc etc. Hell of a way to promote your candidate.
That's one of the reasons that the Independent party has grown so large. When we start hearing supposed Republicans telling us we should vote for so and so because he is the supposed unbeatable Republican, even though he is far left of 90 percent of conservative ideals, then its time to start another party.
At this point I honestly do not think the Republican party will ever get back to its roots, just too many people claiming to be Conservatives to get the vote and then turning left after the elections. I could be wrong, in fact I hope I am, but I see a breakup being the only workable idea right now.
Otherwise, there will be no win for Specter, because there will be no salvation for him (nor for his "legacy") in the Republican ranks.
"What's the big deal?" ... is going to crash down upon the margin of Republicans who should have voted for Toomey, who are not going to get much peace.
To wit: "Winning" a room full of R.I.N.O.'s is not a gain for any principle for which Republicans and democratic-republicanism stand.
People who struggle to maintain liberty, will not fight for scraps of "We'll take anything that we can label a 'win.'"
So-called Bush-bot "pragmatists" like to imagine, and they spin mightily, "political victories," that are not actually gains, but again, "wins" on their toke board(s), while they, who claim that it's not nice to bash fellow Republicans, do just that, bash fellow Republicans.
Ronald Reagan may have advised that we not speak too much in the open about our disagreements with fellow Republicans, yet I will point out that he was talking about fellow Republicans, not R.I.N.O.'s.
You are not a Republican because you wear the name. You are a Republican because of where you stand, and that, very much, for liberty, justice, and the truth.
Those qualities, by, with, and upon which we raise our children to such high standards, are too often betrayed by our suddenly dumping upon our kids, what equivocating temerities of the day, we then thrust our kids into, with which, they are supposed to "deal."
When their principles are challenged, we are, according to the "political realists," to suddenly not stand up for our principles, and thus abandon our teachings and expect our kids to abandon much of what we have taught them, because, as we are instructed by the R.I.N.O. Party, we are too "uncompromising."
That would be the nature of R.I.N.O.'s, to miscast, to misrepresent, to mislead the public into thinking that such R.I.N.O.'s are certainly not ... uncompromising and especially conservative Republicans.
Well, there is the R.I.N.O. Party, and then there is the Republican Party. The R.I.N.O. Party platform is for winning. The Repubicans stand for liberty, justice, and the truth.
Some ever-changing number of conservatives have flowed, and will continue to flow, between these parties.
We stopped giving to the R.I.N.O. Party right at the moment when George W. Bush's "people" made the deals with Trent Lott and Arlen Specter, to keep "President" Clinton in Office. I'll probably never forget it.
Not only what happened between Bush in Texas and Lott-Specter in the U.S. Senate Clubhouse, but what happened over the telephone.
The R.I.N.O. Party called repeatedly, thereafter, asking for money. We said, "No."
To the R.I.N.O. Party, we had to then make clear that "No." means No --- there was no wiggle room wherein we would compromise on the meaning of No.
Where the R.I.N.O. Party is going, scrambling after the scraps left by the left, is not where we are going, even when R.I.N.O.'s speak ill of us as "sore losers."
Shot and shelled, we will still stand for liberty, where, when the left and all who compromise with it are desparate for salvation, will try to find home.
So, I am not going to abandon where we stand for liberty, because it is home, our homes, our country under God.
God Bless.
Same here. He is a statist of the worst kind. He claims to represent less government and more freedom, but every time he has a chance to move toward those goals he does the opposite - he expands government and curtails freedom. I doubt that America will ever recover from his irresponsibility - not in my lifetime, anyway.
The only thing he had going for him was his conduct of the war. Now that he has ordered the Marines to stand down in Falluja, I no longer support him even there.
You just can't trust a man who sells out a good man like Toomey in favor of slime like Specter.
Conservatives will promptly be blamed for the loss, and the call will go out to run a more "moderate" candidate than Specter.
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