Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter last night narrowly won a tough Republican primary against arch-conservative challenger Rep. Pat Toomey. While the Club For Growth and many of the nation’s movement conservatives backed the challenger, Specter was endorsed by both President Bush and by the state’s infamous junior senator, Rick Santorum.
Specter’s victory tells us something interesting about the differences between the two parties right now, and why the Republicans happen to have the upper hand. Of the two Pennsylvania candidates, whose views are closer to those of Bush/Cheney/Rove? Probably Toomey. But they backed Specter, because he was the stronger candidate, and more likely to win in November and help the GOP keep their senate majority.
Rove has made it a priority, in the ’02 midterms and again this year, to find and support effective candidates for gubernatorial and senatorial races, while the Democrats have often seemed more concerned with “making statements,” and/or appeasing special interests. This is why the Dems keep putting forward ineffectual candidates to lose races in such blue states as New York, Massachusetts, and Minnesota.
Particularly vigilant on behalf of Toomey was the right-wing magazine National Review, which put the moderate, pro-choice Specter on its cover last year as “the worst Republican senator.” During the primary battle (which, incidentally, seemed to go on for over a year), NRO’s The Corner group blog was almost constantly filled with pro-Toomey/anti-Specter sentiment.
Now here’s what’s funny: the day after Toomey’s defeat, the debate on The Corner is one that fans of “Savage Love” will appreciate: “Should Santorum get a pass?” The bloggers (and the mainland National Review) are upset that the Senate majority whip, a pro-life Catholic and one of the most conservative members of the Senate, chose to back his more moderate colleague over Toomey, and are debating whether the decision has caused irreparable damage to his conservative bona fides!
How ironic that Santorum, who is such a reviled figure on the left that he’s had the rare honor of having a deviant sexual act named after him, is now being attacked from the right for not being pure enough a conservative.
Posted by Stephen Silver at April 28, 2004 11:11 PM"Rove has made it a priority, in the ’02 midterms and again this year, to find and support effective candidates for gubernatorial and senatorial races, while the Democrats have often seemed more concerned with “making statements,” and/or appeasing special interests. This is why the Dems keep putting forward ineffectual candidates to lose races in such blue states as New York, Massachusetts, and Minnesota."
You make it sound like the Dems have some centralized national candidate selection bureau, which is obviously false. I can't really speak to what happened in New York, but I suspect Cuomo had stronger national backing than McCall. In Massachusetts Shannon O'Brien was the winner of a hard-fought primary, not a candidate imposed by the national party. The last-minute selection of Mondale in Minnesota has to be regarded as a fluke - and in any case, is there anyone better they could have put forward? I also doubt that
Roger Moe was parachuted into the Minnesota governor's race by the national party - if there was any ineffectual statement-making candidate in that race, it was Judi Dutcher, who some national Dems effused about because her status as a recent convert from the GOP made the Republicans look 'extreme' - never mind the fact that she was underqualified, nor the galling hubris inherent in her act of seeking the nomination of a party she had only recently joined (and no, she doesn't get a pass for being good-looking).
Joe-
Perhaps I should've been clearer. What I meant was that the Republicans DO have a central system for choosing successful congressional candidates (led by Rove). The Democrats don't, or at least not a very effective one, which is one reason they don't have the upper hand right now.
As for Judi Dutcher, a party choosing a candidate for governor who had recently switched parties has precedent in Minnesota; see Norm Coleman in '98.
Posted by: Stephen Silver at April 29, 2004 10:56 PMSteve -
"Choosing" probably isn't the best word, since the White House's anointed candidates still need the approval of the state parties, i.e. at the convention or primary level. It may be that state and local Republicans are more deferential to their national leadership than Dems are (more often than not, state and local Dems take umbrage at national efforts to "impose" candidates on them), but if so it's not by much, as Toomey's strong showing indicates.
Posted by: Joe at April 30, 2004 12:22 AM