Here are some excerpts:
President Bush and his political guru, Karl Rove, have endorsed Specter and done everything possible to discourage Toomey. Bush will, of course, be on the ballot in Pennsylvania this November, with hopes of burying the Democrats with a win there. His support for Specter suggests that he'd rather fly into battle with a long-serving moderate as his wingman than a true-believing abortion foe and tax-cutter like Toomey.
This is consistent with the way Bush has governed. With a budget surplus to spend, he both sated the party's base with a historically large tax cut and indulged the pork-barrel wing of the Republican Party, which argues that a majority party has to buy a little support on the margins by giving in to local projects.
That's the approach that led to four decades of postwar dominance by the Democrats, who governed with majorities featuring every stripe of politician, from far-right Southerners to prairie populists to college-town socialists. The resulting chaos was also, arguably, what caused the Democratic egg to finally break apart 10 years ago, never to come back together again.
And here are some more excerpts from another [article http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp? art_id=6488] in the Spectator. It confirms that backing Specter is all about general election politics for Bush.
Pennsylvania is the jugular vein of the Blue State coalition, an accessible target -- polls show the President running even with or slightly ahead of John Kerry in the Keystone State -- and a deadly one. If Kerry retains all the states that Gore won in 2000 except for Pennsylvania, he can pick up an electoral vote-rich state like Florida or Ohio and still lose. This doesn't mean it's impossible for Kerry to win without Pennsylvania, but it would be significantly more difficult; he would have to pick up a large swing and pick up one or two smaller states (like Nevada or New Hampshire) and retain all other Gore states. You can bet that Karl Rove has looked very carefully at the electoral dynamics in Pennsylvania.
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At the very least, the base strategy seems higher-risk: Toomey may excite conservatives, but he's also likely to galvanize liberals. Toomey could very well become a figure that liberals successfully define as an extremist, and serve as a tool for scaring moderates. A humdrum Senate race, where Specter remains the frontrunner for months, keeps the focus on Bush, who (polls show) can appeal to Pennsylvania moderates on his own terms.
Therefore, I think Kos is wrong. I think we should be rooting for Toomey to win. Lets galvanize our base. Sure it is risky because a Toomey victory will also galvanize the right wing to vote as well. But hell, I firmly believe that there are more of us than them, but they win often because we are constantly less energized. A Toomey victory will energize our base, and I believe Toomey's positions will scare the Moderates that Specter was so good at winning.
Vote Toomey April 27, 2004. Polls close at 8 pm.
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