Posted on 04/25/2012 8:32:48 AM PDT by Vigilanteman
Armstrong County coal entrepreneur Tom Smith broke away from a crowded field of contenders on Tuesday to win the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate and the opportunity to take on incumbent Sen. Bob Casey Jr.
Smith, 64, of Plumcreek won 42 percent of the vote with 65 percent of precincts reporting, preliminary results showed.
"This election will be about Sen. Casey's record. In his six years in the Senate, Casey has been President Obama's most trusted ally in massively expanding government, ballooning the debt and eroding our freedoms," Smith said. "A half-million unemployed Pennsylvanians deserve a senator with the real world, private-sector experience to get our economy back on track."
Republican leaders called for party unity after a bruising primary in which Smith and other candidates tried to appear the most conservative.
"It is time for all Republicans across the state to put the primary race behind them ... to beat Bob Casey," said Tim Burns, 44, of Eighty Four, who sought the Republican Senate nomination until losing the state committee endorsement in January.
(Excerpt) Read more at triblive.com ...
Thanks for posting some good news, and yes, GOPe blood on the ground makes me smile.
Hopefully it’s just a trickle of a stream that will turn into the Mississippi in congress.
Right you are, V-Man, Gleason got it shoved in his face with Welch’s humiliating defeat! Made my day! :)
The Tea Party is proving to be a huge influence in the primary selection process...once again. This is where we can have the most influence. We need to keep sending grassroots conservatives into government at all levels through the Republican party, and push the party rightwards and towards good constitutional policy.
go get him Mr. Smith....
Bob Casey is one of the laziest Senators this state has ever had.
If he was replaced by a direct fax line to ObaMao's office, nobody would notice.
If Smith was supported by the Tea Party, then the Tea Party was split. Michelle Bachman, Herman Cain and I supported Rohrer. Smith was a recent conversion from being a life-long Democrat, but Rohrer didn’t have the money to flood the air with negative commercials. It was Rohrer who came in second.
Now if we can knock off Hatch and Luger!
He comes across as a real dim bulb.
Almost all of the people in our group liked Rohrer (though a few die-hards kept raising the pay raise issue), but felt Tom Smith backed the same principles and was more electable due to his ability to self-finance.
Just like the Rohrer people were able to overlook his vote on the pay raise, our people were able to overlook Tom Smith's longtime voter registration in the Democrat party. Armstrong county is run by Democrats from top to bottom and anybody who isn't registered in the party runs the real risk of having their voter registration accidentally lost or their property tax assessment unfairly jacked up. My county (Westmoreland) was exactly in the same situation before we cleaned them all out in the last election cycle, first time since the Eisenhower administration!
Tom Smith changed his registration to GOP just last August. I did the same just last month.
ping
Is there really a Sen. Robert Casey Jr.? I live in PA and you can’t prove it by me.
This is very good, as I suspect Casey will now adopt extreme environmental positions in an effort to draw a contrast between himself and the Candidate from Big Coal.
Rural Pennsylvania voters don’t want to continue living check to check on meager jobs, hoping to win the lottery. Energy is our path to prosperity. Let Casey become a roadblock to that.
FWIW, I am currently out in Utah visiting my Reservation relatives. Hatch failed to win the GOP Party endorsement at the state convention and now must compete in an open primary against a united TEA Party backed candidate.
But he has the intelligence of a cardboard cut-out. That's still better than Patricia Bin Murray of Washington.
you should see the form letters he send to his voters...
I wrote to him often and once he took two months to answer, I had even forgotten what I wrote about to him!!! I’ve saved them all..
I’ll do all I can here in rural America for Mr. Smith to get to Washington!
we rural Somerset County Americans are really tired of Obama, Casey and all the rest of the yahoo's.
(p.s...I was a buckeye for 52 years..why oh why did I return to this place???)lol guess because my paycheck returned and I had to follow or else!!!)
I've met him. I bumped into him at Constitution and 1st, when he was trying to avoid meeting with constituents during a tea party rally. I can report that he had nice shiny shoes, an expensive suit, nice manners, and to all appearances, a vacuum between his ears.
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