In the ad, Corbett—who is against a severance tax on extracting the gas—cautions that drilling for natural gas must be done with care for the environment. As he did during his visit to the Patriot-News editorial board last week, Corbett attempts to show toughness against the industry, promising that companies and people who violate laws will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The problem with that mindset is that it isn’t proactive, especially when Corbett’s anti-tax stance keeps him from supporting any extraction taxes from seeding environmental impact funds.

Corbett’s position on Marcellus Shale extraction tax was under fire recently from the Times-Leader editorial board, which seems to weigh in on the need for taxes not to plug general fund deficits, but to prepare Pennsylvania for the damage that is bound to occur. If nothing else, the 250,000 acres of contaminated ground due to coal mining in the state is fair warning about the realistic impact of shale drilling and fracking.

“Corbett should realize there are unexpected public costs resulting from drilling, which involves land disturbance and the use of large quantities of water,” the newspaper wrote in a recent editorial. “At times things will go wrong.”

It continues:

Northeastern Pennsylvania already has experienced possible drilling pollution. On Thursday the state Department of Environmental Protection chief publicly threatened a lawsuit against Cabot Gas & Oil if it fails to build an $11.8 million water connection line in Susquehanna County to service Dimock Township residents whose water supplies are tainted with methane.

Municipalities in which drilling occurs also will need help repairing roads damaged by heavy truck traffic and providing additional services to meet swelling populations. Many lawmakers recognize the burden and are willing to divert a portion of an extraction tax to municipalities.

Yet, Corbett, citing his no-tax-increase pledge, is among those politicians arguing a new levy will send drillers elsewhere.

Arguments for staying ahead of the billion-dollar industry by instituting safeguards as well as taxes that like those of the other states aren’t part of Corbett’s campaign.

But the state’s top prosecutor promises to sue the bad guys who do wrong once he becomes governor.

For those scoring at home, that was a swipe at the $787 billion stimulus package passed in early 2009 by the Democratic-controlled Congress and signed by the Democratic president—an early turning point for this year’s election, which appears to be serving as a referendum on deficit spending as a stimulant.

There might have been a few laughs inside the Hershey Lodge ballroom, but that was before former veteran newsman Ted Koppel deftly demonstrated that there’s nothing very funny about American politics right now. As the emcee and guest moderator of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry’s annual dinner, Koppel warmed up the crowd by uttering the mantra that has induced a national depression over our near-miss Great Depression Part II.

“We have a deficit—a $1.3 trillion deficit,” Koppel said at the start of the Pennsylvania gubernatorial debate between Democrat Dan Onorato and Republican Tom Corbett.

But whatever national mood swings are roiling the midterm elections, the showdown between Onorato and Corbett appears to be growing more parochial, steeped in name-calling that only comes when politicians from the same western Pennsylvania region have to show how inadequate the other fellow is.

For the record, the best stuff from last night’s debate came after the televised event was done. That was when the gloves came off, or at least the gloves of one opponent.

Corbett left the building as soon as the hour was up. His campaign aides said the attorney general had another event to hustle off to, which meant Corbett’s solid and gaffe-free performance could stand on its own.

“These debates are for those Dan Quayle moments,” state Senator Jake Corman(R-Centre) said, “but they both did a good job. They both articulated in good fashion how they would govern.”

“I’ve heard this same debate 20 times over the past 12 years,” political strategist Larry Ceisler said. “My feeling is Corbett did better than expected. There were no gaffes. Dan has a better grasp of the issues, but you have to be aggressive. There aren’t many opportunities like this to go directly at him, so you have to take advantage.”

The message must have made its way to Onorato, who promptly sauntered out to meet the post-debate media gaggle by launching into attack mode about Corbett’s Harrisburg-insider status and his no-tax pledge—a mode that many had hoped the Allegheny County executive would have displayed during the actual debate.

After all, it’s Onorato who trails Corbett by as many as 15 points in statewide polls, and it is Onorato who called on Corbett’s camp to engage in 14 debates before settling for just a few.

“We’re running for governor. That pledge is hokey and this is serious business,” Onorato said, repeatedly characterizing Corbett’s “no-tax pledge” as a campaign gimmick that sidesteps realistic solutions for Pennsylvania’s looming economic challenges.

“This race is just getting started,” Onorato said, loaded to the gills in microphones feeds.

When it was clear that Onorato had upped the ante on campaign rhetoric, Corbett’s camp sent out a surrogate in front of the cameras for Corbett.

“Mr. Onorato is an expert in inconsistency,” said Jim Cawley, Corbett’s running mate. “He raised taxes in Allegheny County. In fact, there’s a drink tax there with his name on it. And you know why he’s not signing [the no-tax pledge]? It’s not because it’s a gimmick. It’s because he knows he can’t keep it.”

Then Cawley added the slur that the GOP intends to reiterate as the ultimate Onorato-killer this campaign season: “He sounds like Ed Rendell did eight years ago when Rendell promised to sign tort reform.”

The differences last night were certain. Onorato is calling for a severance tax on Marcellus Shale natural gas. Corbett is not.

“But everyone wants to hear about jobs,” Corman said.

And, then again, everyone will have to hear about the drink tax, which Corbett will use to show Onorato’s willingness to raise revenue, and everyone will have to hear from Onorato how Corbett is another Harrisburg insider, that he’s a career politician appointed to his first jobs.

“Biggest difference is our resume,” Onorato said.

“My opponent wants you to believe I’m ‘only’ a prosecutor,” Corbett said.

Five weeks. At least one more debate. No more Ted Koppel. Maybe a few more martinis and buttered rolls.

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.

It’s been almost exactly two years since John McCain announced on Aug. 29, 2008, that mid-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was his pick for vice president.

“Brilliant!” cried Republicans, who feared McCain’s campaign had no juice left.

“Insane!” cried Democrats, who flew off the hinges over an unknown former small-town Alaska mayor with insta-rock star appeal.

McCain called Palin, “The running mate who can best help me shake up Washington,” sounding like he half-believed it.

“She’s got the grit, integrity, good sense and fierce devotion to the common good that is exactly what we need in Washington today.”

It seems appropriate to relive that moment in history. Two years later, Sarah Palin returns to Pennsylvania Friday, the state John McCain needed to win to have any chance at the White House.

Two years after helping Barack Obama become president, Pennsylvania is back in the swing-state column. This year, Republicans are hotly cobbling together voters eager to prove they’re on the right side of the enthusiasm gap.

What kind of reception does Palin get here?

What, if anything, would she mean to candidates like Tom Corbett or Pat Toomey, the gubernatorial and Senate candidates at the top of the GOP ticket this fall?

It’s an interesting question, even given the solid leads Corbett and Toomey have in the polls over their Democratic opponents. In the spring of 2009, Pennsylvania Republican Party officials tried to enlist moderates like former Gov. Tom Ridge to run for Senate, believing Toomey was too conservative. Corbett’s swing to the right has not been lost on any political observers.

Now GOP officials are courting Tea Party support, signing no-tax pledges in hopes of riding a Constitutionalist wave back to power.

Now comes Palin, scheduled to arrive today in Hershey to speak at in front of the conservative values Pennsylvania Family Institute. She’ll then participate in the Glenn Beck rally in Washington.

Indeed, Mama Grizzly arrives in Pennsylvania at a most interesting time. On Tuesday, Palin went five-for-five with her endorsement of primary candidates across the country.

That includes her support in Alaska of conservative Joe Miller, the Yale-educated attorney who appears to have upset incumbent U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

Palin, in an appearance on Fox News Wednesday, was beaming about the results. She compared the victory to the 1980 U.S. Olympic ice hockey team’s upset of the Soviets, calling Miller’s win a “Miracle on Ice.”

Yet for the week’s victory spoils, there remain so many questions about what Palin wants.

And while the mad scramble of August 2008 to assimilate the meaning of Sarah Palin’s presence in national politics has calmed, there’s hardly a campaign or issue or political equation that somehow does not get bounced through the Sarah Palin prism.

She has weighed in on the Islamic cultural center proposed for two blocks from Ground Zero. She has supported Dr. Laura, the conservative radio host who machine-gun uttered the N-word 11 times on the air and then decided to not renew her contact.

Politically, Palin has not ruled out a run in 2012. However, polls last month out of early primary state Iowa found Palin running fourth among four potential Republican candidates.

“What she’s become is a celebrity among Republicans and a turnoff to Democrats,” said Tom Jensen, political analyst at Public Policy Polling.

Jensen said his group conducted an interesting poll in Pennsylvania last month, asking people if they would be more or less likely to vote for a Palin-endorsed candidate.

“Republicans said they would be 47 percent more likely and 18 percent less likely to vote for her endorsed candidate,” he said.

“Democrats said they would be 75 percent less likely and 11 percent more likely to vote for a Palin-endorsed candidate, which shows the huge difference between parties,” he said.

Jensen said that presents an issue going forward: How to utilize Palin’s party-splitting credentials?

“The Republican base in Pennsylvania is already fired up, so if I’m a Republican strategist, I would wonder if her visit would fire up Democrats who might remember why they went out and voted in 2008,” he said.

After two years in the spotlight, Mama Grizzly is still the mother of political polarization.

Toomey made the statement at the end of his appearance at the Pennsylvania Press Club Monday, only to see a wave of critics calling him out. That included the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which dug up a 2003 headline from Toomey’s hometown newspaper, The Morning Call, which read: “Toomey: Privatize Social Security.”

The former Club for Growth president said he does favor allowing younger workers to deposit savings into private accounts, a position he has held since his first congressional term in 1999. He recently touted it in his book, “The Road to Prosperity,” which is now selling for $3.03 on Amazon.

The key to understanding this semantic subterfuge is, well, semantics. The word Toomey uses is “personalized” Social Security accounts.

The increasing volume on Social Security was escalated Wednesday, when former Senat0r Alan Simpson the GOP co-chair of President Obama’s deficit commission, was force to apologize for sending an e-mail to a female activist for seniors in which he described Social Security as “a milk cow with 310 million tits.”

The flap has prompted an outcry amongst groups like AARP, which are calling for Simpson to resign or for the president to fire him from the commission post.

Democrats have been charged with trying to gin up anxiety about the future of Social Security benefits, like when President Obama recently said some GOP leaders are “pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall.

The president called such privatization “an ill-conceived idea that would add trillions of dollars to our budget deficit while tying your benefits to the whims of Wall Street traders and the ups and downs of the stock market.”

The issue resurfaced in time for election year political football after Congressman Paul Ryan, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, offered a proposal that would allow younger people to put Social Security money into personal accounts.

This pretty much mirrors the proposal pushed unsuccessfully by former President George W. Bush—which was supported by Toomey.

In a conference call with reporters Thursday, Burn emerged from a post-primary reorganization of the state party leadership to take aim at Toomey, the former Lehigh Valley congressman and former Wall Street derivatives trader. Burn accused Toomey of channeling citizen anxiety about the economy onto the bailouts and stimulus packages enacted since late 2008.

“He’s focused that angst on the band-aid, not the disease, but we’re going to tell voters in Pennsylvania what’s really going on,” Burn said. “His actions [in Congress and as president of conservative Club for Growth] created the shell game. It was a deception and he wants to say the cure is what’s wrong. He created the sickness.

The criticism comes as Democrats have dug up three separate videos featuring Toomey during his stint in Congress, including this from C-SPAN in 1999, when he called for the relaxation of regulation against credit default swaps, and this video from 2000, when he urged the House to deregulate the financial industry.

Toomey’s campaign, for its part, has stayed on message.

“With every independent poll showing Toomey with a big lead, and with [Democrat Joe] Sestak’s Washington allies spending a million dollars in two weeks running attack ads that numerous independent analysts are calling ‘false,; it’s pretty clear that the Sestak campaign has reached a new level of desperation,” spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik said. “Take away all the smoke and mirrors from the Sestak campaign, and you are left with this indisputable fact: Joe Sestak supported, and Pat Toomey opposed, the biggest gift Washington politicians have ever given Wall Street, and that is the $700-billion bailout paid for by Pennsylvania taxpayers.”

Maybe.

Libertarian candidate Marakay Rogers says she’s prepared for the ballot challenge brought by Republicans. The York lawyer said she has more than 24,000 signatures, about 5,000 more than necessary to secure a place on the Nov. 2 ballot.

“The thing that’s disappointing is that the process disenfranchises actual voters for extremely technical things,” Rogers said. “People who wanted their signatures to count on ballots for third party candidates are having their signatures challenged for writing ‘Frederick’ instead of ‘Fred.’”

Meanwhile, the rest of us are still trying to figure out what it means to be a Tea Party candidate, since the Tea Party Patriot coordinator for Pennsylvania said there’s no such thing.

“The reason this was important [to work with state GOP leaders] to knock John Krupa off is that if he had gotten two percent of the vote, he would then have the right to nominate other Tea Party candidates,” said Diana Reimer of the Tea Party Patriots in Philadelphia.

“We’re not a political party,” Reimer said. “We don’t endorse candidates. This was a play by the Democrats, but Tea Party people aren’t going to put up with that.”

State GOP spokesman Mike Barley was even more forceful in slamming Democratic allies of Dan Onorato for the help they gave Krupa. Onorato’s campaign has denied any involvement in Krupa’s petition drive.

“Oh, you mean John Krupa, Dan Onorato’s candidate?” Barley scoffed. “That was a designed effort by Dan Onorato to siphon votes from Tom Corbett. It was so transparent.”

Is Sestak concerned that when the two appear together in Scranton, it will re-open the sideshow debate about how Clinton, acting on behalf of the Obama administration, tried to prod Sestak out of the primary against Arlen Specter?

“I am honored to have worked for President Clinton,” Sestak said. “He created 22 million jobs. [Republicans under George Bush] created none. We’re going to talk about creating jobs.”

Sestak seems to be carefully choosing who should join him on the trail. In July, Sestak told the Pennsylvania Press Club that he wants First Lady Michelle Obama to come to Pennsylvania for campaign stops. Her husband is less popular in the polls. Plus, he supported Specter, the man Sestak handily defeated in the Democratic primary.

Last spring, state GOP chairman Rob Gleason accompanied state Senator & Majority Whip Jane Orie to Washington to discuss a potential run. She is said to have done a 180 after Toomey supporters threatened to yank support for her sister and Supreme Court candidate, Joan Orie Melvin.

Now, Jane Orie and another sister are heading for trial in Allegheny County.

Meanwhile, moderate alternative Tom Ridge, who GOP officials were trying to lure into the race, has taken a $900,000 gig to be the face of the Marcellus Shale Coalition for the next year.

Interesting turn of fortunes for two candidates who, at the time, were seen as better choices for moderate Republicans by party leaders.

Pan to the Hilton Harrisburg ballroom, where in front of the Democratic Senate candidate there sat entire tables filled with business leaders whose faces were set like stone, their arms clenched across their chests.

With body language like that, who needed air conditioning?

Still, Sestak sailed full-speed ahead, trying to persuade the audience he’s not the “Nancy Pelosi-liberal” that Republican opponent Pat Toomey declares him to be.

“If you are committed to an ideology, you can’t change course,” Sestak said.

He took exception to the charge that he’s in lockstep with Nancy Pelosi.

“I didn’t agree with Speaker Pelosi when she backed Arlen Specter,” Sestak joked.

Better to get off the subject of the House Speaker and point out the differences between himself and Toomey, the former three-term congressman from the Lehigh Valley.

Sestak, a second-term Delaware County congressman, painted himself as a leader who seeks pragmatic solutions.

Toomey, meanwhile, is a former banker who “has dedicated his life” to dealing the kind of “exotic financial instruments” that helped sink the economy, Sestak said.

“My opponent believes what’s good for Wall Street is good for Main Street… despite all the evidence to the contrary… that prosperity trickles down,” Sestak said.

These are largely uncharted waters for Sestak, who has had to change his tune since defeating Specter in the Democratic primary.

Sestak won largely because he was able to paint Specter as an opportunist. What was unnecessary material in that primary fight was the fact that Sestak and Specter shared voting records on many issues Democrats care about, including the $787 billion stimulus package.

Now, with such clear ideological differences in play, Sestak’s tactics and message have had to change, while Toomey has been able to stay on message, hammering the government bailouts and stimulus and the passage of health care reform legislation.

This has put Sestak in the position of having to face withering criticism from conservative voters who will use the deficit and Congress’ votes on bailouts and stimulus as a prime litmus test.

This is an area where Specter had pretty clearly defined his response, saying a vote for those bailouts was a vote to keep the country from sinking into another Great Depression.

It’s a message Sestak would do well to appropriate, given the mash-up he delivered Monday when he was asked about the federal bailouts.

Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association board member David Taylor asked for an accounting of those bailouts.

Confronting the critical inquiry, Sestak ended his answer with an analogy about how the economy had been torpedoed and was sinking and “we had to caulk holes.”

The man who asked, however, was utterly unmoved.

“His direct answer was incomprehensible and then it disintegrated into baby talk about the house being on fire,” Taylor said.

The fact is, it’s not exactly clear what Sestak meant, which is a problem.

Fiscal conservatives are eager to connect all the watery dots of the bailouts and stimulus spending and link them to the impending implosions of state and local economies.

They’re eager to make a case that it’s not the failure and abuses of an unregulated “free” market that has imperiled the economy, but Nancy Pelosi liberals who think all big business is bad business.

“The market is like a kidney,” Taylor said. “It sorts out what’s good and bad, but you lose that market function when businesses that should have been allowed to fail are bailed out.”

Sestak said he aims to reach across the ideological divide.

“I’m not saying I changed anyone’s mind, but I saw a few nods,” he said.

Don’t know where he was looking.