Posted on 11/04/2004 8:30:06 AM PST by truthandlife
Could President Bush have won Pennsylvania if he would have endorsed Toomey instead of Spector? Toomey lost in the Republican primary (49½ to 50½ %). Things were looking pretty good for Toomey until Bush weighed in. He could have left it at a pro-forma statement of support, but instead he came to Pittsburgh to stand beside Specter and say: "I appreciate my friendship with Arlen Specter. He's been a friend for quite a while. I'm proud to campaign for him. I think he's earned another term in the United States Senate. He's a bit independent-minded sometimes, but there's nothing wrong with that."
Concerning this independence of mind, Ann Coulter writes: "More than any other person in America, Arlen Specter is responsible for a runaway Supreme Court that has turned every political issue into a 'constitutional' matter, giving radical liberals an uninterrupted string of victories in the culture wars."
When Toomey seemed to be closing the gap despite kind words from on high for his opponent, Specter put out campaign ads with the theme "Pat Toomey vs. George W. Bush" and touted Bush’s support in a last minute blitz of telephone calls.
Now Arlen Spector at a news conference less than 12 hours after winning a record fifth Senate term, Specter wasted no time in asserting himself.
"If you have a race that is won by a percent or two, you have a narrowly divided country, and that's not a traditional mandate," he said. "President Bush will have that very much in mind."
Could Bush have won Pennsylvania if the Republicans would have had a more conservative candidate to vote for in the Senate? Would more conservatives have voted in Pennsylvania?
What does Bush and the Senate need to do to punish Arlen Specter?
I dunno...I think Toomey would have lost in PA.
Yes - that and "supressing" the massive voter fraud in Philly...
We'll never know if Toomey would have won. But we'd still be better off with 54 senators and no Chairman Specter.
Specter got more votes than John Kerry in PA. There were over 150,000 people who voted for Kerry and Specter. None of those people would have voted for Pat Toomey. Arlen Specter is arguably the most popluar politician in Pennsylavnia. It sucks, but that's the truth.
I don't quite understand why the Republicans didn't do more about vote fraud this time around in Pennsylvania. Bush was suppose to win in 2000 with Ridge in office and he lost because of vote fraud. Same thing in 2004 because of governor Ed Rendall's Democrat Vote Fraud Machine.
I
Not likely, sorry.
>>>>I dunno...I think Toomey would have lost in PA.
I don't think you just ask if Toomey would have won or lost. You also have to ask what his place on the ticket would have meant for Bush. I'm guessing that some PA conservatives, disgusted with Bush's endorsement, stayed home. The results in PA just don't seem to match the results elsewhere in my mind.
I think they would have come and voted if Toomey had been on the ballet, and its hard to say how much that could have helped the president there.
patent
No way to win PA until you get Pilly votes from 80% Demon to 65% Demon
Toomey will be back. There's talk of putting him up against Rendell.
See:
Phillly Fraud by the numbers (a logical look at Philadelphia)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1268546/posts
These votes were from the Union-bots. The AFL-CIO endorsed Specter over Hoeffel.
Toomey would have definitely lost. However, it would have made no difference to Bush's showing in PA. I can understand how many think think the senate Republicans would be better off without Specter, but I disagree. This is likely Specter's last term, and I don't see him actively blocking the President's judicial selections.
It's based on a fundamentally incorrect assumption that conservatives didn't turn out, or if we did, we didn't vote for the President. The GOTV effort in PA was huge, and successful. And conservative Republicans went for Bush. We were angry over the endorsement, and we're still angry because Specter is such a hyperinflated windbag who's done so much to harm the conservative cause, and because unlike GWB and Rick Santorum, we know he isn't finished with that yet.
The "Republicans" who went for Kerry are Country Clubbers living in the Philly suburbs. Last time, they went for Gore. This time, they went for Kerry. If anything, Specter could have helped us with this group: they're his kind of "Republican." He did not. To my knowledge he didn't even make a single positive statement about the President during the campaign, anywhere, anytime.
To win Pennsylvania, Bush needed to flip two areas. He needed to get the votes of ethnic Catholics in Coal Country who went for Reagen twice. He made some progress, but he didn't get as much as he needed. He also needed to flip the Philly suburbs back into the Republican column. He didn't.
Theories about rampant fraud or derailment by angry conservatives don't wash. Fraud happens, but you don't come up 125,000 votes short. No significant number of conservatives was so determined to punish Bush that they stayed home. The stakes were too high.
Those of us who know Specter knew we wouldn't have to do anything to punish the President for his foolish lapse: Specter is going to punish Bush plenty in the next four years, without any help from deranged right wingers.
And, in the ultimate irony of this election, the GOP removed the main obstructionists for conservative judges in the Senate - only to have that role replaced by one of their own, that they could have gotten rid of as well.
Weigh this carefully. In the politics of yesteryear, as expressed by another President from Texas, LBJ, this would have been "Keeping his p****r in my pocket", but I am sure that George W. Bush is nowhere nearly that pragmatic or cynical. As it is, Arlen Specter is beholden to Bush now, and as chair of the Judiciary Committee, is in a position to steer the nominations for the Federal bench, all the way up to the Supreme Court. All Bush should have to do is pick up the phone, and the wheels are already greased.
If Bill Frist can show some cojones, and hold the Democrats' feet to the fire when they threaten a filibuster, by keeping any filibuster going non-stop until they sit down, he may just be able to break that tactic for good. At best, the Democrats will abandon the tactic for good, and at the minimum, it would put them on notice, there is just not much tolerance for disruptive activities.
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