Almost three hours after the polls closed, Toomey rallied about 150 supporters at the Best Western hotel here, and with his wife and children by his side, celebrated the landslide win over conservative activist Peg Luksik.

And he quickly got to the business of trying to define Sestak.

“Joe adopts positions that are so extreme, so far to the left, they’re well beyond the consensus even of the Democratic Party,” Toomey said.

He said Luksik had run an “honorable campaign.”

“I appreciate her participation in the process,” he said.

Luksik, for her part, was hardly ready to embrace Toomey.

“Mr. Toomey has shown that he does not meet the standard of my endorsement,” she told pa2010.com in a phone interview.

The Quinnipiac University survey released Wednesday echoed what has now become an overwhelming body of polling data that shows Specter double-digit lead over his challenger having completely evaporated. In the poll, Specter wins 44 percent of the vote, compared to 42 for Sestak. And in an indication that the race is still very much up in the air, 14 percent of likely primary voters are undecided and 29 percent of respondents who do pick a candidate say they might change their mind.

“[Specter] has a history of winning close elections and he’ll need that to continue, because his once commanding lead is gone,” Quinnipiac University Polling Institute Assistant Director Peter Brown said in a statement. “His margin over Sestak is too close to call.”

The results amount to a sea change over the last month. Quinnipiac found Specter leading by 21 points on April 7—just as Sestak’s clearly effective statewide advertising blitz began—and by 8 points just over a week ago.

“The intangibles are clearly on Sestak’s side,” Brown said. “He has the momentum and the anti-incumbent wave sweeping the country is a good omen for the challenger.”

Sestak has risen simultaneously to a fall in Specter’s numbers, according to the poll. Fifty percent of likely Democratic voters now view Specter favorably, down from 60 percent a month ago. Sestak’s favorability ratings have jumped about 10 points, and the proportion of voters who haven’t heard enough about him to form an opinion has dropped by 12 points. Any effort to define Sestak in a negative light appears to have had a relatively minimal impact; only 10 percent of likely voters view him unfavorably, compared to 42 percent who view him favorably.

Specter still holds a 7-point lead when respondents are asked who they “trust more to do in office what they say they will during the campaign.” But the two are virtually tied when respondents are asked which candidate most shares their values and which candidates is most consistently liberal. Specter’s best hope, it seems, continues to be that voters will pull the level strategically, with Republican Pat Toomey in mind: 54 percent say he’s more likely to win in November, compared to 29 percent who say the same about Sestak. Recent polling data has cut against the perception—on paper, at least—that Specter matches up better with Toomey.

The poll was also one of the first surveys to include Republican Peg Luksik, and it found Toomey, the presumptive nominee, easily topping her 60 percent to 9 percent, with 31 percent of likely Republican voters undecided.

The poll did not gauge potential general election matchups.

The survey of 945 likely Democratic, conducted May 5-10, had a margin of error of 3.2 percent.

Click here to see the poll.

But after Pat Toomey recently appeared on Glenn Beck’s Fox News program, Senate primary opponent Peg Luksik’s campaign wants a piece of that action, and is enlisting her supporters to make it happen.

In an e-mail to supporters this week, campaign manager Jason High loudly proclaimed in the subject line “Help us get get Peg on Glenn Beck!”

Recently, Peg’s primary opponent appeared as a guest on the Glenn Beck radio program,” High wrote. “Members of Peg’s Home Team, however, know that Peg Luksik is the candidate that is much more in line with Beck than her opponent. Unfortunately, the mainstream media continues to ignore Peg, so we need your help.”

High then directs supporters to a Web site with the program’s e-mail address and phone number.

“Please take a few minutes of your time to call and/or write an email to the Glenn Beck show and tell them that you want Peg Luksik on his show before the May 18th primary!” High wrote.

In a four-and-a-half-minute Web video, Luksik and her husband talk about their sixth pregnancy, and the dangers it posed to both her and their unborn child. Their sixth child, PJ, is also featured in the video.

Last week, Luksik pushed back against Toomey more directly than at any point during the long campaign, pointing out his past pro-choice positions.

See the video below.

Luksik’s campaign seized on a voter guide issued by the anti-abortion group LifePAC of SouthWestern Pennsylvania, which included Toomey on its list of candidates who oppose abortion rights. Though Toomey has for several years now described himself as staunchly pro-life, he had a more libertarian-style, pro-choice image in the late 1990s. When seeking the party’s nomination for Congress in 1998, he told The Morning Call that while he was personally opposed to abortion, he also didn’t like to see government take that individual choice off the table.

“Abortions should be legal in all circumstances as long as the procedure is completed within the first trimester of pregnancy,” he told the newspaper in a 1998 questionnaire.

By the time he was gearing up to challenge Senator Arlen Specter in the 2004 Republican primary, he had established a position more staunchly opposed to abortion. With the political focus this cycle largely on economic issues and the state’s conservative movement lined up firmly behind him, Toomey has rarely had to confront questions on social issues. But Luksik, a conservative activist who has struggled mightily to cut into Toomey’s considerable support as the presumptive GOP nominee, saw the LifePAC voter guide as a chance to bring the issue back to the surface.

In a letter to the organization’s president, shared with reporters on Monday, she expressed her disappointment. She noted that Toomey said he would have voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, and recalled Toomey’s votes in congress to loosen a ban on federal funding for abortions overseas and against abstinence-only education.

“My history on the issue of the sanctity of life is unquestionable, while my opponent’s history should certainly be cause for concern,” Luksik wrote. “You are preparing to distribute tens of thousands of voter guides to your membership that give the illusion that there are two pro-life Republicans running for United States Senate. In fact, there is only one, and it is me.”

Toomey’s campaign declined to comment.

This time, like every time, Luksik is bemoaning the fact that she has to pay taxes, repeating the tired old “conservative” complaint that federal taxes might just be unconstitutional (didn’t Wesley Snipes try that one a few years ago?) with the insinuation that the “government” just takes your hard earned cash to use it for nefarious deeds—read, things they don’t care about.

Of course, this time around, Luksik’s rant also includes subtle references to the latest, and perhaps most ridiculous, rhetoric coming out of the Republican Party these days, and that would be the inference that all of our country’s economic problems—record deficits, deep recession and the financial realities that have come along with them—have materialized just in the 15 months since President Obama took office.

Right.

I think a reality check is in order for both the willfully ignorant and the deliberately deceptive.

Let’s start with the fact that, in the real world, you have to pay for the things that you want, they don’t come free. And in a civilized society, we look out for each other, we care about our neighbors and our fellow citizens, especially when they are going through difficult times. “Conservatives” seem incapable of wrapping their heads around both of these concepts. They want to pay only for the services they think they need, they want and they deem important, and they always seem to believe they know exactly how much all of these things cost them—and I guarantee you, they’re low-balling.

Better still, if you can, have someone else pay for the things you desire, with their money or their blood. Witness the Iraq War. Those on the right exuberantly cheered us all into it, then seemed unable to get themselves to their local recruiting station to sign up and fight it.

Bill Clinton, the last “tax and spend” Democratic president, and the last to spend his entire tenure in office facing allegations of “illegitimacy” by those who can’t seem to play nice with the other children in the sandbox, left office handing his successor, a $230 billion annual budget surplus, a gift George W. Bush turned into a record deficit of $374 billion in only three years, then another record of $413 billion just a year later thanks in large part to tax cuts aimed mostly at the wealthiest Americans, proposed by Bush and ratified by a Republican Congress. This despite the economic downturn the country was facing after the 9/11 attacks and despite warnings from every responsible economist in the country.

Of course, Bush’s out of control spending contributed to the problem as well. Democrats are the party of big government? The federal government grew under Bush more than under any other president, and public spending increased by 70 percent. That’s more than double the increase under his Democratic predecessor and another reflection of the modern-day Republican ideology of “do what you want, worry about finding someone to pay for it later.” During Clinton’s time in office, Congress passed a pay-as-you-go mandate to ensure that any increases in spending were paid for, and any cuts in taxes were equaled by decreases in expenditures. Bush and the Republican Congress discontinued this policy and current Congressional Republicans are on record as being opposed to its reinstatement.

Bush fought two wars off the books during most of his eight years in office, the costs of which have yet to be figured into the deficit but which certainly added to the $8.3 trillion in debt he left behind.

And you want to talk about “the redistribution of wealth” via federal taxes? OK, lets talk about the hundreds of billions that went into the pockets of companies like Halliburton and KBR that came out of the pockets of working and middle class families. “Conservatives” don’t seem to mind at all when the “redistribution” goes up.

Bush and the Republican controlled-Congress that was in place for six of his eight years in office are to blame for the mess our country is in. And the fact that they weren’t worried about it one bit during the time that they were in power but are ranting and raving about its perils now tells you all you need to know.

Anyone who believes that Obama has somehow managed to rack up record debt in just 15 months and is responsible for a recession that began before he even took office needs psychological help.

And as a reminder to the woefully uninformed “Tea Partying” crowd: Not only did American’s taxes NOT rise last year, but shortly after Obama took office, the Democratically-controlled Congress cut individual federal taxes for this year by about $173 billion, meaning Americans are actually paying lower taxes this time around, something Tea Partiers would be aware of if they actually looked at those 1040 forms they sign. Americans had to work until April 9 this year to pay off their taxes, the earliest “Tax Freedom Day,” along with last year—you know, the year Obama supposedly raised everybody’s taxes—in decades. Under Bush, it was never earlier than April 14.

For years now, today’s “conservatives” have had little more to offer than self-serving lies. But these days, they don’t even seem to be going to the trouble of mailing it in.

It was a break in the citizen/state relationship that caused the Revolution that created America. The Declaration not only explained how the relationship had been broken, it explained what a proper relationship should be. It said that citizens had endowed rights and the reason those citizens created the government was to protect those rights. So the government was an entity “contracted” by the citizens.

Most important contracts between parties are written down so everyone is clear on the terms and conditions. Our mortgage, car loan, and employment are usually defined in carefully worded documents. The documents lay out what each side is responsible to give or do for the other, and what duties each side must perform to receive the designated compensation.

The contract between the citizen and the government in America was written down and formally agreed to. We know that contract as the U.S. Constitution. It clearly lays out the duties and rights of each side of the citizen/state relationship.

In the contract, the citizen agrees to follow the laws, be loyal, and ensure that the government gets the funds it needs. The government agrees to provide a safe and stable environment in which the citizens can live their lives. The specific tasks the government must complete to provide that environment are even listed in the words of the agreement, as are limits to the authority of the government.

A short description of the agreement might say that the government is the fence around the nation, so citizens living within the nation can build their lives and their communities.

As long as both sides honored the contract, America thrived.

But today, the contract is broken.

The federal government does not want to be the fence around the country. It does not want to be limited in its scope or its authority. And as it expands, it requires ever larger amounts of revenue.

That revenue comes from the citizen.

The sad reality is that the overwhelming majority of America’s citizens do not have an accurate idea of how much revenue they are supplying to a state that has violated its contract with them. Most of us will be able to say how large our refund will be without realizing that getting a refund means that we have given the government an interest-free loan for some portion of the previous year.

It would be a challenging exercise of each American to actually calculate how much revenue moved from their bank accounts to the bank accounts of the federal government in 2009. And if we were to complete the exercise, it would be a natural response to focus on the revenue.

Focusing there would also be a mistake. The amount of revenue the federal government is pulling from its citizens is always related to how closely the government is following the terms of its contract with those citizens.

If we truly want to get control of the spending in Washington, we must learn what the contract says by reading the Constitution. And then in this election year, we must remove those officials who are not abiding by the terms of our Constitutional contract and replace them with people who will insist on enforcing the contract that built the most free and most prosperous nation on earth.

The writer is a Republican candidate for Senate.

With one exception.

The administration is planning to bring the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11 onto American soil and into American civilian courts for trial. The message is that those who took American lives and destroyed American property cannot get a fair shake if they are tried at Guantanamo in the Courts of Military Justice.

Those courts are unfamiliar to most of us, so on the surface, it sounds like the Washington establishment is simply trying to ensure that justice is done.

That is a false perception.

The Courts of Military Justice are the forums in which every member of Americas Armed Forces is tried when he is accused of a crime. They include lawyers and procedures that are designed to ensure that the rights of the accused are protected. They are designed to ensure that the security of America is protected as well.

It is beyond disrespectful for Washington to say that the legal system that is good enough for every person who is defending America is somehow not good enough for the people who are attacking America. Bringing these people onto American soil is compounding the problem. The base at Guantanamo is isolated for a reason. The isolation keeps it from being a target.

The terrorists being brought to trial have openly boasted about their success in murdering Americans and publicly stated that dying a martyr’s death is a goal for them, as long as they kill Americans in the process. When we transfer their trials to areas that are filled with Americans, we are painting a huge target on the back of every citizen who lives within those areas.

America’s military service members, both those on active duty today and those veterans who have completed their service, work to keep our country safe from attack. They serve so their families and their neighbors will not be on the front lines of a battlefield.

For this administration to decide unilaterally to bring that front line to New York, or southwestern Pennsylvania, or any other part of this nation, is a direct slap in the face of every man and woman who has given blood to protect Americans. Trying to justify such a reckless and perilous action defies imagination.

The administration has attempted to counter the outrage by saying that they will set aside $73 million to help with security. That does not begin to cover the additional costs to the local governments. So not only is Washington proposing to put American lives and property at risk unnecessarily, they are planning to make the American taxpayer pay for it.

This is madness. A secure location and an appropriate system for ensuring that justice is served already exist in Guantanamo. We should use them.

The writer is a Republican candidate for Senate.

“I have attended public event after public event and been inundated with people opposed to the Senate and House health care proposals not because they have been told by the media that it is a bad bill, but because they actually read the bill,” Luksik wrote in a letter to the Toomey campaign. “People are more informed and engaged than ever before, and I think that it is our responsibility to honor that through the way that we conduct our respective campaigns.”

She did not specify how many debates she wants, and said all details were open to discussion.

A prominent conservative activist who has run for governor in the past, Luksik had hoped to be the leading GOP candidate early last year when Toomey was leaning toward a gubernatorial run instead of a Senate run. Before Toomey got into the race, Luksik argued that he would be the one splitting the Republican vote if he ran. In recent months, the Republican establishment as well as much of the rank-and-file has overwhelmingly coalesced behind Toomey, and while Luksik still retains a loyal following, pollsters have refrained from even surveying the primary between them.

In a statement, Toomey spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik said that “we believe debates and candidate forums are important parts of the electoral process. That is why Pat has already participated in four joint forums with Peg in different regions of the state and he intends to debate her again before the primary.”

“You can free us from Arlen Specter, who you inflicted upon us in the first place,” Morris said in targeting the Republican-turned-Democrat early and often, even calling him a “doddering old fool.”

In saying that at least eight congressional seats held by Democrats “who don’t deserve to be there” are in play,” Morris argued that “Pennsylvania, more than any other state in America, can deliver to us a Republican House of Representatives.”

Morris’ read-meat-filled speech was sandwiched by statewide candidate forums, first for the party’s two major gubernatorial candidates and then for its two senate candidates. Not much emerged in the form of substantive policy debates in either brief event. Gubernatorial front-runner Tom Corbett decried federal stimulus money “we never should have taken in the first place,” and opponent Sam Rohrer called for widespread cuts in education, welfare and corrections. Senate front-runner Pat Toomey said he could beat either Specter or his primary opponent Joe Sestak. “It’s amazing how quickly the American people have responded to the excesses of this administration,” Toomey said. Opponent Peg Luksik sounded a religious note, seeming to argue that the federal government has tried to displace God. “The government cannot be the highest authority,” she said.

The applause that greeted both Corbett and Toomey underscored the near-certainty that they will win the party’s endorsement for their respective races  when the Republican State committee meets Saturday morning.

But it was Morris who made the evening for Republicans. He warned them not to tack to the center in the coming elections. He advised them to make President Obama an issue in each and every race. And he elicited laughter at every turn, whether in struggling to pronounce longtime Congressman Paul Kanjorski’s (D-11) name or in saying that “there is no such thing as a moderate or conservative Democrat—I know because I used to be one, and I am an instinct species, a walking dodo bird.”

He said Republicans had to run against spending and budget deficits—not by trumpeting the unemployment rate.

“You’d probably lose the election,” he said of the latter strategy. “Because by 50-40, the American people are demented enough in a poll I finsihed last week to believe Bush is more responsible than Obama for the current economic situation.”

Morris also repeated a key strategy being adopted by Republicans across the country for the midterm elections, striking down a famous quote by former House Speak Tip O’Neill.

“He said ‘all politics is local,’” Morris said. “The hell it is. All politics is national. All politics is about Barack Obama. … To win this election we need to nationalize this campaign.”