The resident Bush-despiser at the Houston Chronicle, political columnist Cragg Hines, thinks Pat Toomey is just way too conservative to deserve a win over incumbent Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania primary next week.
Republican strategists, including apparently Karl Rove at the White House, believe that the hard-right Toomey would be a red flag and draw more Democrats to the polls. Pragmatism still trumps orthodoxy for some Republicans.Specter had established a fairly down-the-center voting record. In interest-group ratings in 2002, Specter got a 46 percent from the AFL-CIO, 35 percent from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action and 50 percent from the American Conservative Union.
Toomey lives up to his hard-right billing. In 2002, he got a 100 percent rating from the ACU, 13 percent from the AFL-CIO and zero percent from the ADA.
Specter's campaign says that on 76 occasions since Toomey came to the House in 1999, he has voted in opposition to all other Pennsylvania Republican representatives. The tag line to some of Specter's ads attacking Toomey is: "He's not far right, he's far out." Specter seems to have that about right.
Since Hines is reliably wrongheaded, his column alone is a convincing reason to root for Toomey against the moribund and unhelpful Specter.
Posted by Alan at April 25, 2004 03:32 PM