The Meehan and Christie show

December 4, 2009 at 11:44 am

You had to really want to see Pat Meehan and Chris Christie  Wednesday night—it was raining cats and dogs and the address for the Concordville Inn, “Route 1 and Route 322,” seemed to cover about half of Delaware County. But there we were, anxious to see the Republican candidate for the 7th District and the newly elected New Jersey governor, his friend and former neighboring U.S. Attorney.

Sixty minutes there was enough time to get …

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Obama at (almost) one year

November 30, 2009 at 9:14 pm

A lot in the 2010 elections obviously depends on President Obama’s standing one year from now. The conventional wisdom had him unstoppable a year ago, and now says he’s in today. I didn’t agree with it a year ago. And now? No easy answers, but a couple of observations:

—I wouldn’t be too quick to write Obama’s political obituary. A recent poll showed he had lost popularity faster than all but one or two presidents: …

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Holiday pickings

November 25, 2009 at 8:57 am

A couple of quick notes before Thanksgiving:

1. Interesting to see that The Rothenberg Political Report now ranks the Senate race as a p2. Interesting also to see that Jim Gerlacha href="http://www.pa2010.com/2009/11/gerlach-scoring-points-on-the-campaign-trail/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.pa2010.com']);return TrackClick("http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pa2010.com%2F2009%2F11%2Fgerlach-scoring-points-on-the-campaign-trail%2F','isn%22t+giving+up+quite+so+easily')" target="_blank" isn’t giving up quite so easily/a against Tom Corbett. I’ve always felt Gerlach was potentially the stronger candidate.  Corbett’s lead reflects insider support rather than voter enthusiasm—it will be fascinating to see if it survives./p
p3. Who is Lou Barletta kidding by saying a href="http://www.pa2010.com/2009/11/in-deciding-whether-to-run-again-barletta-has-campaign-debt-to-retire/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.pa2010.com']);return TrackClick("http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pa2010.com%2F2009%2F11%2Fin-deciding-whether-to-run-again-barletta-has-campaign-debt-to-retire%2F','he%22s+not+sure')" target="_blank">he’s not sure about running in the 11th District? If he’s not going to run, why is he talking about it? The best way to retire his old campaign debt is to win this time around. Having essentially tied Paul Kanjorski in the worst Republican year in memory, won’t he have a …

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Can Toomey win in PA?

November 23, 2009 at 7:00 am

Interesting …

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More thoughts on Corbett

November 17, 2009 at 2:25 pm

Very interesting posts by I did—some of the problems faced by Tom Corbett in “leveraging” the attorney general position into the governorship, especially after the recent Perzel indictment(s).

I can’t explain it, but I just have a very mixed reaction to Corbett. He seems decent enough, and I suppose that locking people up is pretty much his job. Certainly you can’t accuse him of being too narrowly partisan.

The problem is that locking people …

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Corbett, Perzel and the winding road to the Governor’s Mansion

November 16, 2009 at 8:53 am

I had a mixed reaction to the news last week that Attorney General Tom Corbett has …

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Democrats ignore voters at their peril

November 9, 2009 at 10:55 am

Interesting item …

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GOP rebounds in Pa.—or does it?

November 6, 2009 at 2:46 pm

I posted yesterday on the Republican Party’s pAre they true?/p
pOn the surface, they would seem to be.  Joan Orie Melvin’s election to the state Supreme Court has got to be satisfying for a party that has gotten used to losing at the statewide level. In my own Montgomery County, the party took six of seven judicial races despite a very aggressive Democratic campaign and a deficit in voter registrations. All this from the same GOP that lost the 2008 presidential race in Pennsylvania by more than 10 points./p
pThe problem, of course, is that it isn’t the same electorate. The Republicans did well on Tuesday, partly because they campaigned hard, but largely because the great bulk of last year’s Democratic voters, especially in Philadelphia and other cities, didn’t participate. That’s a victory in itself—the Democrats were supposed to be using 2008 as a basis for future strength—but it doesn’t tell you a whole lot about what will happen when all those people come back.  Local elections are also notoriously non-ideological; local judicial candidates seemed most concerned to let you know who was Jewish./p
pSpeaking of ideology, the party’s success has been accompanied by a a href="http://www.pa2010.com/2009/11/dede-dede-dede/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.pa2010.com']);return TrackClick("http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pa2010.com%2F2009%2F11%2Fdede-dede-dede%2F','nasty+struggle')" target="_blank">nasty struggle between conservatives and moderates, or conservatives and more conservatives, within party ranks. The state GOP is historically the most moderate of any really competitive big state Republican Party (NY and NJ haven’t been competitive, at least until Tuesday).

Will the departure of Arlen Specter prove an outlier, or will the bloodletting seen in upstate New York spread to our state?

What has happened, I think, is …

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National results leave no doubt about GOP comeback

November 4, 2009 at 10:38 pm

Tuesday’s election results—GOP victories in Virginia and New Jersey and a pretty clear turn by suburban voters against the Democrats—make clear that the tide has turned since the 2008 elections. As for the New York City mayoral race, in which Mayor Michael Bloomberg barely squeezed out a win against an underfunded opponent, it is as much an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment result as a philosophically conservative mood.

Still, with the Democrats controlling all of the principal branches …

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NY-23 and the Republican ‘suicide march’

November 2, 2009 at 12:29 pm

I posted …

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