Rock solid?
He endorsed Specter over Twoomey.
He went waaay too far to the corporatist side of the GOP - being rabidly corporatist is not the same as being pro-business - corporations love erecting hurdles to competitors through government action.
He did stupid stunts like trying to get the NWC out of weather forecasting to benefit Accu-Weather.
And he only maintained a facade of living in his home state - his official residence was an empty house.
Those hardly sound like conservative traits to me - and especially traits that endear voters in his home state.
Throw in the fact that the Dems were smart enough to nominate a pro-lifer this time (taking away his main advantage in prior races), and he was doomed. But a large part of it was his own doing.
He endorsed Specter over Twoomey.
Yep, voting record doesn't matter. Screw him if he went with the party once. We should get rid of all conservatives who do just one thing that we don't like. Oh... we did. Now we get no more conservative justices, no border fence, higher taxes, socialized (badly broken) medicine, etc.
We should simply go with communism and be done with it. That way "conservatives" will actually have something to complain about. I'm glad that I'm a conservative, not one of these whiny people who say that they are conservative but give us communism.