Posted on 02/18/2021 8:39:16 AM PST by lightman
“It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to,” sang Lesley Gore in 1964, in the chorus to a song about a young teen betrayed in the worst way by her guy. “You would cry too if it happened to you!”
The Republican Party in Pennsylvania appears to be having its own Lesley Gore moment now, as a number of county party committees have taken action this week to condemn the U.S. Senator Pat Toomey, R-Allentown, for his vote last week to convict former President Donald J. Trump of inciting violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Saturday’s 57-43 vote fell short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction, but the seven Republican senators who voted yes made this the most bipartisan impeachment verdict on the trial of a president yet. And that’s not sitting well with some of the Republican partisans.
It’s their party, these members say, they still love Trump, and they’re sick to death of those in the party who don’t have his back against, in their view, the united forces of Democrats in Congress and the mainstream media.
It was a reaction that was best summed up Monday, in comments made by Washington County GOP Committee Chair Dave Ball to a Pittsburgh television station on its resolution condemning Toomey’s vote:
“We did not send him (Toomey) there to vote his conscience, we did not send him there to do the right thing, whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us, and we feel very strongly that he did not represent us.”
Washington County had joined Republican organizations in Clarion, Fayette, Lawrence, Westmoreland and York counties in censuring Toomey through Wednesday afternoon. The chair of the Republican State Committee, Lawrence Tabas, has also sent an email to state committee members alerting them to a future meeting to discuss Toomey’s vote.
Others are actively pushing back on the idea, arguing it’s best to let the issue fade away.
So, what is with all this handwringing over a vote that the Republicans actually won, cast by a guy who long ago announced that he won’t be seeking re-election in 2022? As such, as one GOP source told PennLive Wednesday, the censure resolutions have the practical effect of putting a note in Toomey’s personnel file.
It may be part exhibition season for the fights ahead in 2022, as the party tries to settle on nominees for an open gubernatorial and Senate races, and - in a larger sense - its post-Trump direction. It’s also, partly, just those who are in firm control of the party at the moment having their say on a matter of internal party politics.
But does it help in the wider world?
Some have real concerns about that.
“The Republican Party needs unity, not a purge,” said Joseph DiSarro, a political science professor at Washington & Jefferson College in southwestern Pennsylvania, who also happens to be a member of the Republican State Committee. “We don’t want to start purging. We need the big tent.
“As Karl Rove (the former political strategist for former President George W. Bush) has warned... this party is in disarray in the post-Trump era. The last thing the party needs is a purge. The last thing the party needs is a discussion of who is a true Republican, and who is a RINO,” DiSarro said, using the acronym for Republican-In-Name-Only. Pat Toomey
Recent national polling suggests the delicacy of the problem.
While Trump — one month removed from his presidency — is still the dominant figure on the Republican landscape, recent polling suggests that as much as one-fifth of voters who identify as Republicans say they don’t want to see him play a major role in the party going forward.
“What the smart folks see, very clearly, is that you can not win a national election with 75 percent of the Republican Party,” said Alison Dagnes, a political scientist at Shippensburg University. “You will never have the numbers that way.”
Dagnes said recent actions like the Toomey censures also can have a chilling effect on future candidate recruitment.
“This is not just an internecine fight within the Pennsylvania Republican Party. I think this is far more existential. By doing this they are discouraging the more, non-Trumpy Republicans from running,” she said. That, she added, could hurt the party in statewide races, and in local races in the more purple parts of the state.
Some party leaders say those observers are missing the point.
To them, this is about the majority within the party having its say over an issue of great frustration. They will have their voice heard now, and the party building can follow.
Keep in mind, said York County Republican Chairman Jeff Piccola — where the county committee voted to censure Toomey after Saturday’s impeachment vote — party activists were already angry at what they see as mistreatment of Trump from Day One by a media establishment that never liked him and a Democratic Congress that actively worked to undermine his presidency.
Toomey’s vote, a betrayal by one of their own, seemed like the last straw, he said.
“It wasn’t my idea to bring up this resolution,” Piccola said. “This came from the bottom up. It did not come from the top down... This was a vote by people who worked diligently for Republican candidates — some for years, including Pat Toomey — to get them elected and re-elected, and it was an expression of their disappointment and frustration in him specifically.
“I think it’s retaining people that were not necessarily Republicans but who were for Trump, and are now going to be Republicans, because we stood up for what we believed in,” said Piccola. “Tell the pundits we’re fine.”
Some state leaders, however, aren’t so sure. And they have mounted a rear-guard effort to try to stop the “censure Toomey” movement in its tracks.
They counted some temporary wins in the postponement of a vote on a censure resolution in Chester County Tuesday night, although county GOP Chairman Gordon Eck told reporters it could still come up next week.
And in the Republican stronghold of Lancaster County, a proposed censure effort that had support from a majority of committee members present failed to get the 75 percent super-majority needed to get formal consideration Tuesday night, according to LNP.com.
Elsewhere in the midstate, the Lebanon County Republican Committee has a Toomey censure resolution on the agenda for its March meeting, and Cumberland County Republican Committee members are circulating a petition for a special meeting to discuss a censure there.
The stop-the-censure voices are most prominent in the larger counties with densely-populated suburban areas where local party leaders are desperately trying to hold off gains by Democrats.
They include leaders like Sam DeMarco, the chair of the Allegheny County Republican Party who said this to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Monday:
“One of the things that concerns me as a chairman is the reflexive group-think from those who believe if you don’t agree with them 100 percent of the time on 100 percent of the things, you’re a RINO [Republican in Name Only], spineless, a fake Republican or worse.”
In Cumberland, Republican County Commissioner Gary Eichelberger agreed the party has to be about more than unswerving loyalty to Trump. Invoking another Republican hero, he noted “(former President Ronald) Reagan was the biggest proponent of a big tent. He would be appalled at all of this.”
A lot of the current friction, DiSarro believes, is the result of the party’s ongoing assimilation of the new faces brought in by the Trump movement with the “establishment” conservative who traditionally aligned with politicians like former Gov. Tom Ridge, or Toomey; and the even more moderate Republicans in places like the Philadelphia suburbs.
The movement, he said, has pushed new faces to the forefront in many counties, and those leaders want to be responsive to their committee members and registered voters.
Toomey is far from the only Republican feeling heat at home.
In the U.S. House, Republican members beat back a widely-publicized effort to remove U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, from leadership ranks after her criticisms and vote in favor of Trump’s impeachment last month. But Cheney was still censured Feb. 6 by the state Republican Party organization, which asked for a return of all party donations to her last campaign.
Two of Toomey’s seven Senate GOP colleagues who voted to convict Trump — Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, and Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana — have also already been censured by their state party organizations.
The Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania, meanwhile, had not set a date for a statewide discussion as of Wednesday evening.
One state committee member who said he personally opposes censure, said he’s counting on President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his thin Democratic Party majorities in Congress to help reunite the party in the long run.
“If people really want to get excited, they ought to look at what Biden’s proposing, and that should get ‘em revved up,” said Dick Stewart, of the state committee’s South Central Caucus.
I see this exercise as a huge waste of time, especially since Toomey isn’t running again. Our PA. R party should be working overtime on election security issues and stopping the push for permanenet mail in voting. This other crap is nothing more than a distraction.
“The last thing the party needs is a purge. The last thing the party needs is a discussion of who is a true Republican”
It’s the first thing the party needs if it wants to keep the base and the grassroots activists and donors onboard.
NOT going to happen baby; I left the REPUGLICRAT PARTY over a month ago, currently an Independent, if PRESIDENT TRUMP starts a new party I will change to that.
Toomey’s going to be gone anyway but 2022 needs to be a huge RINO hunt. Not all the Toomey’s out there are voluntarily retiring. So we need to involuntarily retire a bunch of them.
They don’t represent us. They are corrupt weasels and surrender monkeys. We’ve had it with them.
She is a Bushie. No more Bushies.
EVER.
She is a Bushie. No more Bushies.
EVER.
Hey, we are getting rid of Toomey and that is a plus!
It was a reaction that was best summed up Monday, in comments made by Washington County GOP Committee Chair Dave Ball to a Pittsburgh television station on its resolution condemning Toomey’s vote:
“We did not send him (Toomey) there to vote his conscience, we did not send him there to do the right thing, whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us, and we feel very strongly that he did not represent us.”
*********-*********
This.
The Democrats promptly sent him into retirement in their 2010 primary and Toomey was elected with TEA Party support. I even took a picture with Toomey at a Tea Party Rally.
One thing so many people fail to realize is that there was a reason we voted for Trump.
He cares about America and its citizens and didn’t fall prey to the good ole boy network. He kept his promises (as many as he could) to us. He remembered who it was that hired him.
The long-term representatives have fallen into the good ole boy network and forgotten that they work for us, not the other way around. We are a Republic; not a Monarchy.
So, a big Yeah!, we need to weed.
..... said Joseph DiSarro, a political science professor at Washington & Jefferson College in southwestern Pennsylvania, who also happens to be a member of the Republican State Committee.
Its people like this who have kept the PAGOP a bunch of liberal bobble-head RINOs and why people like me have left the GOP.
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