“He’s like the AIG employees: he creates the problem, now he wants the bonus,” he said of Toomey, president of the national limited-government activist group Club for Growth. “He wants to be promoted to the Senate. He’s going to have more votes to explain than I do. Stay tuned.”
Specter voted to secure those bonuses.
“Well, of course I am,” Mr. Specter said when asked if he’s worried about the conservative backlash. “But (President) John Kennedy had it right. He said, ‘Sometimes the party asks too much.’ And this is something I think is necessary for the country. It goes beyond politics. It goes beyond the Democratic or Republican position. It’s the right thing for America.”
Mr. Specter said he would have supported the package even if Democrats had not added $6.5 billion in additional money for the National Institutes of Health to the final version of the bill.
Mr. Specter had sought the money for years, and had mentioned that he wanted the money in the bill when he met with President Barack Obama last week.
“That’s only one small part ... That’s not determinative in my mind,” he said.
The stimulus vote could create “a political problem,” he said, but “I thought the public interest was so important that I have to take whatever problems it brings me.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2181685/posts
• Making the Bush tax cuts permanent
• Death tax repeal
• Cutting and limiting government spending
• Social Security reform with personal retirement accounts
• Expanding free trade
• Legal reform to end abusive lawsuits
• Replacing the current tax code
• School choice
Here's an article from FR's own Salena Zito which shows that Club for Growth is an advocacy group dedicated to narrow economic issues.
"In an interview, Toomey said that he has no problem taking aggressive positions like MoveOn.org, but only within the realm of economics. The club takes no stance on other red-meat issues of the conservative base such as illegal immigration and cultural decay."
Club for Growth advocates for Republican candidates solely on these issues, so attempts to attribute non-economic positions to Toomey based on Club for Growth fall short.