The more I look back on last years primaries, the more disgusted I am that Pat Toomey fell short in his bid to unload Specter. I certainly voted for Toomey. The GOP MUST work harder to jettison the liberal ("moderate") flotsam.
However, I try to look at this from the point of view of the White House.
First of all, regardless of how scummy a senator is, if the party leader won't support incumbents, then that leader (the President) loses all clout in the Senate.
Second, if polls show that Toomey can't win the primary or the general (despite how Toomey supporters felt) it is smart to not support him, because the President didn't want to earn the enmity of a powerful senator.
Third, if Specter was pretty much guaranteed of re-election, it would be counter-productive to destroy his campaign and end up with a democrat. Remember, the Senate was very closely divided. Specter's election gave us the committees and the majority leader, even if we ended up with Specter.
This goes to the whole problem of the RINO thing. If we defeat RINO's in primaries, we may lose in the general. And that may mean we lose the majority, which it is important to hold. As bad as the Senate is now, the idea of Harry Reid controlling the agenda and democrat-led committees ramping up investigations on everything from Abu Ghraib to Enron Redux is simply not acceptable.
So, this is what Bush has had to deal with, and is still burdened with. We can't hold power without the RINO's, but with them we find much of the agenda sabotaged. I don't know a realistic way to fix this, but it is the problem we face right now.