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No anxiety as Corbett & Toomey fit GOP to a tea

Pennsylvania did not need a Tea Party candidate to yank the GOP back to the right.

It had Pat Toomey.

The former Wall Street derivatives trader and restaurant owner compiled a 97 percent conservative rating during his three terms representing the Lehigh Valley in Congress. Toomey’s conservatism became a selling point to Republican Party officials after reading the tea party leaves in April 2009. Having driven Senator Arlen Specter from the shrinking GOP tent, what better way to try and pack it than with tea party activists who were calling for reform — and the heads of incumbents.

“Whether it was Bob Bennett in Utah, or Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, or Mike Castle in Delaware or Arlen Specter, it is the ouster of incumbents or the establishment people,” Specter said Wednesday from his office in Washington. “I think we saw that during [a town hall meeting on health care reform] in Lebanon last year. People are furious.”

That fury has somehow been neatly managed by the state Republican Party.

“I think Pat Toomey is the right candidate for Pennsylvania right now,” state party spokesman Michael Barley said. “I think Pat Toomey is exactly the person he’s campaigning as: a very fiscal conservative who wants to root out wasteful spending and cut taxes.

Pennsylvania also has a Republican gubernatorial candidate, Tom Corbett, whose reputation as a moderate was shown the barn. Corbett has embraced Tea Party principles, including signing a no-tax pledge and joining a lawsuit with other attorneys general that claims the national health care reform law is unconstitutional.

The top-of-the-ticket tandem shows that the state GOP was able to co-opt a good dose of Tea Party energy and principles instead of being blown up by them.

“Toomey is a perfect Tea Party candidate in terms of spending, small government and less regulation, though he worked within the dreaded Wall Street establishment,” Franklin & Marshall College pollster and political analysis G. Terry Madonna said. “Corbett is running as the second coming of [New Jersey Gov.] Chris Christie, with no taxes, budget and program cuts.”

Madonna agreed the Tea Party hasn’t toppled the political order in Pennsylvania.

“The tea party did little in the primary,” he said. “All but one of 182 state House incumbents won, all the state Senate incumbents won and all of the congressional incumbents won. But the state Republicans have paid deference to the Tea Party, knowing it is a huge reason for the energy and enthusiasm among Republicans.”

Deference has secured the tacit support of Tea Party activists for Toomey and Corbett. That’s shown in the leads both Republicans hold. In the new Rasmussen poll released Wednesday, Toomey topped Democrat Joe Sestak by eight points. Polls show Corbett enjoying a double-digit lead over Democrat Dan Onorato.

By avoiding the intraparty implosions, Pennsylvania Republicans have a confidence unseen in some states where Tea Party-backed candidates have upset the applecart. That’s especially true this week in Delaware and New York, where the latest round of Tea Party-backed folks has pushed GOP tickets to new realms of conservatism. The results have been thrilling, if only for the shock value and chaos brought to the two-party process.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said GOP TV man John Brabender, who’s helping to run Corbett’s campaign. “People are mad. People want people to know they’re mad.”

In New York, Tea-Party backed candidate Carl Paladino campaigned on turning unused prisons into work camps for welfare recipients and other incendiary positions, then blew the doors off GOP-endorsed candidate Rick Lazio. In Delaware, Christine O’Donnell took an endorsement from Sarah Palin and crushed Mike Castle, a congressman and former governor who everyone on both sides of the aisle expected to bring a Republican victory in Joe Biden’s old Senate seat.

Now there’s a new order—but one that spells problems for Republicans who hoped to win not only the House, btu also the Senate.

“The Republicans in Delaware nominated somebody that they don’t believe can win—I think in the words of the state party chair, couldn’t be elected dog catcher,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday.

The morning-after reconciliation between O’Donnell and the Republican Party wasn’t exactly a warm and fuzzy event. Castle said he would not endorse O’Donnell. The National Republican Senatorial Campaign grudgingly acknowledged her win and promised a few dollars. O’Donnell, meanwhile, called the GOP establishment “lazy,” accusing it of political cannibalism for attacking Tea Party candidates.

“I’m not counting on them to win the general,” she said. “I’m counting on the voters of Delaware.”

But in Pennsylvania, that kind of anxiety over the Tea Party’s role has been safely folded into the Republican tent.

September 16, 2010 at 9:28 am

--Laura Vecsey

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