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Michael Livingston's Blog

Michael Livingston's Blog

Purple in Pennsylvania

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Crowded fields another encouraging sign for GOP

I’ve take some heat in comments for suggesting next year, just maybe, might be a good one for the Republican Party. I could eat those words, of course. But the signs keep showing up.

One interesting, if hardly conclusive, sign is the level of candidate enthusiasm. After former U.S. Attorney Pat Meehan suggested he might be running for Congress in the 7th District, fellow Republican Steven Welch implied he might stay in the race, anyway. Everyone and his sister seems to be running for Lieutenant Governor. And neither Jim Gerlach nor Tom Corbett shows any signs of slowing down in the race for the top spot.

Politicians are, with very few exceptions, realists. You don’t get a long line of people running for things they don’t think are winnable—or that people won’t contribute money for. Of course, it’s 15 months from the election, and what people think will happen is not necessarily what will. But the long line of candidates suggests that, at the very least, Republicans think they have a good year ahead; and that is a vital first step.

share001btn Crowded fields another encouraging sign for GOP

August 17, 2009 at 8:30 am

--Michael Livingston

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  1. Ha!!!

    Aug 17th, 2009

    Crowded fields mean the opposite: disorganization and weakness.

  2. GOPHAWK

    Aug 17th, 2009

    The GOP is engaged in a winnowing of the herd. We must eliminate those who do not share our core beliefs and speak to our principles. The wishy-washy have to go. When you have someone like Pat Toomey who is not afraid to say “repeal Social Security, repeal Medicare, repeal socialism,” then other people see themselves as possible candidates to advance that agenda and they are willing to challenge the incumbents who won’t stand for the free market and winners and losers.

  3. WESTPADEM6

    Aug 17th, 2009

    this race is over if meehan gets in.

  4. David Diano

    Aug 17th, 2009

    And Toomey who embraced Sotomayor and said he would have voted for her too?
    Does anybody believe that a far right-winger like Toomey would have voted for her, when only a few moderate Republicans did?
    Chris Freind is certainly upset at Toomey.

  5. GOPHAWK

    Aug 17th, 2009

    Toomey is not a rigid social issue conservative. He is an economic conservative. The social issue conservatives have to understand that government can no more impose moral standards than economic standards.

  6. Jon Geeting

    Aug 17th, 2009

    When your party is at the lowest level of support since the 1930s, there’s really nowhere to go but up. But that should hardly be comforting to Republicans. Many seem to be drinking their own KoolAid, believing falsely that the recent townhall ruckus is a sign of some larger groundswell of popular support for Republicans or dissatisfaction with Democrats, instead of a well-organized campaign by insurance industry front groups to turn paranoid neo-Birchers out at townhall meetings. In fact, after a week of nonstop coverage of these events, Research 2000 showed the Republican Party lose 2 more points in their weekly tracking poll. These people may be the loudest voices in the debate, but they are not the most numerous. The Republicans’ numbers are still in the basement. Running lots of candidates isn’t impressive if those candidates are more and more conservative, unable to speak to the progressive worldview that is ascendant in a fast-growing share of the electorate.

  7. David Diano

    Aug 17th, 2009

    GOP Hawk-
    Toomey IS a social conservative, with as 0% NARAL rating. Chris Freind is certainly upset about Toomey supporting Sotomayor.

  8. Dave

    Aug 17th, 2009

    “this race is over if meehan gets in.”

    WESTPADEM6, I really think that your underestimation of Welch is exactly why he’s going to give Meehan the fight of his political career.

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