Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Groundhog Day: Toomey Says That Specter Cannot Win This Time    [David Freddoso]

I sat down with Rep. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) the day in March 2003 that he announced he would challenge Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) in the 2004 primary election. Very few people believed he had any chance against the powerful senior senator, who had a large financial advantage and who enjoyed strong support from the Republican establishment and a popular sitting Republican president.

But the following year, after a vigorous campaign that built up a grassroots conservative movement in the state out of nothing, Toomey lost his race by less than 2 percentage points: He came within 17,000 votes out of more than a million cast.

History is repeating itself today. Toomey announced at 7:30 A.M., to the surprise of no one, that he will run against Specter once again. This time, though, he begins with higher name recognition, a lead in the polls (41-27 percent among Republicans in one recent survey) and a network of activists already assembled and ready to do battle for him. Moreover, the Republican establishment that worked against him in 2004 has seen its credibility nearly destroyed in two successive elections.

Toomey believes that his time has come. He spoke with me this morning about his campaign, and about why he expects to prevail this time around.

National Review Online: I remember that six years ago we had this same conversation. You're taking on Arlen Specter again. So why are things going to be different this time?

Pat Toomey: There are a lot of reasons things are going to be different. But the biggest one overall is that Senator Specter has really and truly overstayed his welcome at this point. His support for this massive lurch to the left that the Obama administration and the liberals in Congress have been taking is just beyond the pale. His support for all of the bailouts — the Wall Street bailouts, the automotive bailouts, his support for the stimulus bill, his support for card-check legislation up until the time that he discovered he had a serious primary problem on his hands, and then his reversal. This kind of cumulative betrayal of anything conservative or Republican is just too much. Republican voters are looking for a change. And the encouraging thing for me is that I think voters across Pennsylvania have become very concerned about all of the bailouts, the spending, the debt. And my message of fiscal discipline and less spending and an end to bailouts and lower taxes — I think that's going to resonate across party lines.

NRO: Does it concern you that there's another declared candidate in the race to the right of Senator Specter, Peg Luksik?

Toomey: That doesn't concern me. I think Peg is a capable lady and I think she's done some great work in the pro-life movement over the years. But I think I will be able to generate financial support, the grassroots support, and the traction politically across Pennsylvania to emerge as the clear conservative alternative to Specter. I'm very confident that I can win this.

NRO: Have you spoken to Rick Santorum about the race?

Toomey: No, I haven't.

NRO: Last time, he and President Bush did quite a bit to make sure that Specter stayed in office. This time, you won't face that headwind.

Toomey: No, I will not. This time, things are a lot different. Last time, it was my first time running statewide, it was Senator Specter's seventh time. This time, I start with a major network of grassroots activists and supporters. I start with much more awareness among the voters. I start with a much stronger position, and I'm convinced that I can raise far more money. So I think things look very, very encouraging.

NRO: Let me make the conservative case for Specter. When you lost narrowly in 2004, I know that a lot of conservatives felt like this was one of the worst things that had ever happened. But he ended up being, on the Judiciary Committee, very much key to moving through two very good Supreme Court nominees and a handful of other judges as well. Explain to me why Specter is not worth saving for his contribution to conservatism in that respect?

Toomey: It just baffles me that people bring that up. If Arlen Specter had lost that election, John Kyl (R., Ariz.) would have been the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Do you really think that John Kyl wouldn't have been an extremely effective advocate for Justices Roberts and Alito? Sometimes people want to give Senator Specter credit for things that any Republican would do. It's just surprising when he does it because he's so seldom on the Republican side. Every once in a while, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn. That's not enough reason to keep a guy in office when he so consistently betrays everything that Republicans stand for.

NRO: Pennsylvania went very heavily for Barack Obama, and it's a state where Republicans have had a lot of trouble lately winning statewide, at least for the top offices — for governor, for senator. Senator Santorum was absolutely creamed in his re-election. Why would things be different for you in a general election, should you win the primary?

Toomey: Let's keep in mind — we had an attorney-general candidate who won a big, decisive re-election just last fall. We have alternated Democrat and Republican governors for many decades, and that continues. We have a big Republican majority in the state senate, and we're down by just a small handful of seats in the state house, with a very real chance of taking back control of the state house in 2010. The fact is, 2006 was just a terrible year — the worst year since 1974. Republicans of all ideological persuasions lost races all across the country. Any Republican running statewide in Pennsylvania in 2006 would have lost that year. But 2010 is shaping up to be a very different year. And a Republican who has demonstrated and continues to be committed to fiscal discipline and limited government — I think that is a message that can win back the Republicans who left the party, and it can win over many Democrats, just as I had to do in the three races when I won my old congressional district. That's a district that has voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in five consecutive presidential races. It's a district where my immediate predecessor was a Democrat, and it's a district where the voter registration numbers reflect the statewide voter numbers almost identically. So I've demonstrated that I can win Democrat votes, I can win in a Democrat district, and I'm convinced that this time I'll win in the fall as well.

NRO: Between your service in Congress and now, you've started a bank. Given what's happened with banks lately, there are some potential dangers there, a few ways for Senator Specter to attack you. How do you explain or defend yourself?

Toomey: Senator Specter has demonstrated that he's willing to make up completely dishonest charges, and so one never knows what's going to come next. The bank that I'm very proud to be associated with is a very successful community bank. It's a bank that has no toxic assets. It's a bank that lends money to small businesses and families in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It's a bank that has been very successful, performing probably among the top 10 or 15 percent of our peers nationally, and it's a bank that chose not to take any of the bailout money that Senator Specter voted for. So if he wants to attack me for helping to launch a business that's created a lot of jobs and continues to fund a lot of growth in small businesses across Eastern Pennsylvania, he can go ahead and try, but I don't think that's going to resonate with voters.

NRO: What are the chances that he may drop out of the GOP primary, just given that the numbers are so bad right now?

Toomey: Given that Pennsylvania law forbids a candidate from losing a primary and then going on and running in the general under a different party banner, I think it's a real possibility that Senator Specter will just bolt the party at some point. But he's going to have to decide that. I obviously have no way of knowing if or when he'll do that.

And let me add something that is under-appreciated, but worth mentioning. I honestly don't think Senator Specter has much of a chance at all of winning a general election. If he were somehow to manage to win this primary, which I think is very unlikely, he nevertheless almost certainly would lose the general. Right now, he has polling numbers among general election voters that are worse than Rick Santorum's were at this point in the 2006 election cycle. So in a cycle that's shaping up to be much better for Republicans, he's in even worse shape that Senator Santorum was, and we all know how that one turned out. Secondly, the intensity of the antipathy toward Senator Specter, among Republicans generally but conservatives in particular, is so intense that if he were to win the primary, it is a certainty that there will be a conservative third-party candidate — Constitution Party or Libertarian — somebody who will run for conservatives. Pennsylvania has a history of third-party conservative candidates drawing as much as 10 and 12 percent of the vote. I think that in this case, someone could get as much as 15 percent of the vote. So I don't see any path to victory for Senator Specter, in a primary or a general.

04/15 01:10 PMShare