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?
You are exactly wrong. Not only do I doubt this is Specter's last term (provided his health holds up), but if it is he's going to be even farther left, even meaner, and even more aggressive about his personal agenda with no Republican primary to look forward to in 2011.
You bet your ass!
That is the truth. I have relatives that really like him and many of them are democrats. Sphincter once replied personally by mail to one of my aunts years ago and took care of a phone company harassing her.
I have to agree. A lot of us supported Toomey. But the Philly vote machine and all it's oddities were working overtime on that one. That's why we need to vote out Rendell despite the Philly thing next time. Hopefully Toomey will give it another try. And I know a lot of people who voted for 'Spectre' through clenched teeth because Hoeffel is like Rendell's clone. But after Spectre's post election spew, I'm wondering if he's just the same.
Bush could have won if voter fraud was not a factor.
Illinois and Pa are nototious for union mobster voter fraud.
If the GOP doesn't change the rule up front at the start of the new Congress to disallow filibuster of nominees where constitutional "advice and consent" is required, then we will know he is not serious about winning on judicial appointments. The stakes are high, the Dims will pull out all the stops to prevent 3 Scalia-type appointments to the Supreme Court, and will filibuster til the cows come home, even if Teddy Kennedy is that cow. Specter, Snowe, and Chafee will join them in this, and even if a few Dims don't join in, a filibuster will continue to be successful.
The ONLY strategy that will demonstrate to the Dims and to the RINOs that we mean business is to insert into the organizing resolution of the Senate that there will be no filibusters for appointments, or they will be limited to one week. Filibusters are NOT meant to thwart the will of the majority of the Senate; they are a delaying tactic to be used when someone feels strongly about an issue AND thinks he/she can eventually muster the votes to stop something from being rammed through. Therefore, it is OK by me if they allow filibusters, IF they are limited in duration.
They only need 50 votes for the organizing resolution. If they can't get 50 pubbies to revise the rules on filibusters, then this session will accomplish nothing, and the GOP will be blamed, and its base will desert it in 2006 and 2008, and then Hillary! or someone like her will win in a cakewalk. The stakes are high here people! It starts in December with Frist.
Bush lost because he has been unable to carry the Philadelphia suburbs. Pro-life Conservatives Santorum and Fisher in 2000, and Moderater Specter and Pro-life Conservative Corbett in 2004 did, and they won.
Its as simple as that. It has nothing to do with fraud, of which there is next to zero.
Philadelphia fraud is a do-nothing excuse for Monday Morning Quaterbacks whom simply don't understand that Bush didn't sell well in the Philly suburbs, even as the Republicans mostly cleaned up at the down ticket races in these same locales.
Personally, I think that Republicans need to run an attractive northern Pro-Life/Pro-Gun German Catholic Governor to win bascially Republican states like Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. That's why I keep suggesting John Engler of Michigan. Schweiker of Pennsylvania would have also been a good candidate had he stuck around longer.
As long as we stick with southerners and Californians we aren't going to do as well up north as we should as a party.
Whether or not doing well in those states is important to us as a party is a different question. I believe they are the only way to a lasting majority.
Since 2000, Specter has been voting more to the right than his previous incarnations.
See his ACU record.
I still don't like him, but lets see where things go.
When's the next election for Governor of Pennsylvania? It'd be nice if it were 2006, so that the fraudulent voting could be cleaned up in time for the 2008 Presidential Campaign.
That would be contrary to Bush's winning strategy everywhere else: Get the conservative vote energized and bring it out in large numbers.
That would have been the only way to win in PA, too. But not with Snarlin' Arlen.
Primaries tend to bring out the hardcore PARTY folks. People like me, that write checks and make phone calls during primary campaigns.
Bush won based on people who go to church - mainly big new prosperous protestant churches. These are not (always) the same people who are invovled in party work.
Kerry seemed to have had a massive vote out of Philadelphia however, as compared to Gore. It looks like Gerlach will be spending his last term in Congress. Chester is deteriorating almost as fast of Montgomery it seems.
Wow, they turned out 247% of the dead/felon/senile vote???
Seriously, though, the fact that Bush successfully turned out conservatives in amazing numbers should not de-focus us from the issue of massive vote fraud. Fraud is the backbone of the Democrat party. Target the PEOPLE that operate the fraud.
Gerlach is in trouble because the eastern Pennsylvania redistricting was an enormous mistake. Gerlach must fight uphill against Lower Merion, Norristown, and Reading.
We should have sent Holden and Kanjorski into a single district from Scranton through Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton to Reading.
We should also have pitted Hoeffel and Fattah in a district including Lower Merion, Norristown, Cheltenham, Abington, NW Philly, western North and northern West Philly.
We should then have left Borski mostly alone by stripping out East Oak Lane, Olney, Juniata Park, Oxford Circle, Frankford, and Castor Gardens from his district (Wards 61, 42, 33, 23, 62, and 54), while adding in Bensalem, Levitttown, and Morrisville from Bucks County. This would keep it a marginally competitive district for us by stripping overwhelming Philly Democrat neighborhoods out while ading in Democrat leaning Bucks suburbs, probably more competitive than the curret District 13, which is missing some of the best parts of NE Philly for Republicans which were given to Bucks County. It wouldn't be even in registration, but it would be by voting thanks to conservative Democrats in Tacony and Port Richmond.
Then with Bucks County, we could have added in the Lower Moreland-Hatboro-Lansdale-E. Greenville fringe of Montgomer County to what was then Greenwood's district to make it non-competitive for a Democrat.
Finally, Gerlach would have his district from the remainder of Montgomer County, northern Chester County, and southern Berks County. This would have been another non-competivie district for Democrats.
Really this whole thing was done really dumb, dumb, dumb because we tried to get greedy with Districts 6, 13, and 17 and got bitten in the ass by the shifts in Abington and Lower Merion (no thank you for this Bob Asher!). Even Weldon isn't sitting pretty.
Three districts for Democrats in Philly needed 1,950,000 people. Philly was 1,530,000. Lower Bucks County (Bensalem, Bristol, Morrisville) is another 150,000. Lower Montgomery County (Lower Merion, Abington, Cheltenham, and Norristown) is 190,000. The strip of Delaware County along the river to Chester is 80,000. This would have been perfect, and we'd have a 13-6 state delegation with an outside opportunity in NE Philly and lower Bucks - 3 in Philly, 1 in Pittsburgh, 1 in Johsntown, and 1 in Scranton/Reading.
We will waste a lot of money unseating Holden when we could have let the Democrats do it for us, and we will waste even more defending our position in Philadelphia when we could have made it non-competitive.
As it is, we have 12-7, we can't unseat Holden, we are likely to lose Gerlach, and Fitzpatrick is going to have tough fights for a while.
The only bright side to all of this is we have another chance in 8 years, when we will lose another 2 congressional seats.
What's worse is that Santorum also endorsed Specter...
"I think he may had a chance in Illinois if we could exclude Chicago."
No doubt about that! I am from Illinois, and most of our counties went for Bush. I did a quick tally in a spreadsheet using the county by county results posted at USAtoday.com. To the best of my knowledge the numbers match up with what is posted at the website I got them from.
Bush = 2,364,015 votes; Kerry = 2,826,757 votes. In Cook county alone, Kerry got 1,389,631 votes compared to Bush's 583,774 votes. If you take away those Cook county votes, Bush wins by a margin of 343,115.
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