Posted on 05/08/2009 9:50:43 PM PDT by Born Conservative
Let's review the bidding.
Tom Ridge will not run for Senator from Pennsylvania. He has decided to pass up the chance to trample an ultra-conservative Republican in the primary and sneak past a former-moderate-Republican in the general election for Senate in 2010.
Tom Ridge would have been the Senator from Pennsylvania, but he is smart to want to be the Senator from Pennsylvania.
Arlen Specter has a pain-in-the, er, tush for nearly 30 years. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1980 - the same year as Ronald Reagan was elected President and Dan Quayle was elected Senator from Indiana.
At the time he was 50. He is now 79. Keep that in mind.
Specter was being challenged in a Republican primary by Pat Toomey who was the head of the Club for Growth.
I have been a long-time critic of the Club for Growth because that organization exists solely to raise money challenging moderate Republicans in primaries. I do not believe - and I might be wrong about this - that the Club for Growth has ever dislodged a moderate Republican in a primary and then won that seat with a more conservative candidate.
My beef with the Club for Growth has been: There are plenty of Democrats to go after why diminish the GOP by working for the defeat of Republicans?
Pat Toomey is a former three-term Congressman from Pennsylvania. According to Townhall.com:
His first career was in investment banking from 1984 through 1991. He developed and managed a $21 billion derivatives trading operation for Morgan Grenfell Finance, Inc. in New York, supervising sales and trading operations in New York, London, and Tokyo
.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
His attack on Tommey's professional background demonstrates an intelligence so low that explains how he got a job working for Quayle (Quayle doesn't hire people smarter than he is - so there you are).
PS - people pay to write for Townhall. I think he's among them.
Just a little googling, this reporter could have saved himself the embarrassment of making such a misleading statement. I found via google:
In the 2006 Michigan Republican Primary, Tim Walberg (Club for Growth Candidate) beat incumbant Rep. Joe Swartz, then went on to win in the general election. However Walberg was beaten this 2008 election by Dem. Mark Schauer by 2.3%.
Swartz's profile from wiki: "Schwarz is considered to be a moderate Republican who primarily supports abortion rights and favors embryonic stem cell research.[2] He has favored extending tax cuts, manufacturing liability reform and overhauling America's medical malpractice laws, which he says lead to frivolous lawsuits and force doctors to demur from treating patients." and more telling:
"In 2007, Schwarz was appointed to John McCain's presidential finance committee for the state of Michigan. He'd been co-chairman of McCain's 2000 presidential campaign; the two have been friends for many years.
Schwarz had been rumored to be considering a run for his old congressional seat against Walberg in 2008, either as an independent or a Democrat. Ultimately, he endorsed Walberg's successful Democratic challenger, State Senate Minority Leader Mark Schauer."
From Wiki:
In the 2002 Congressional races, 17 out of 19 candidates endorsed by the organization's PAC won. It also endorsed Mark Sanford in the South Carolina gubernatorial Republican primary as he defeated Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler.
In addition, the Club for Growth also makes independent expenditures encouraging certain moderate Republicans to vote more conservatively (i.e., running ads against Senators George Voinovich of Ohio, Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island after these Senators objected to certain aspects of President Bush's tax cuts).
This guy sounds like an idiot.
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