Every so often, I will be posting links to posts I tend to brand as “alternacon,” stuff that you don’t normally hear from conservatives. Conservatism has a wider reach than the stuff peddled by Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter and I would like to point them out and pass them along.
So here is the first update:
Specter represents exactly the sort of voter that the GOP has been losing in recent years: the kind that agrees with it on several issues and is willing to join it as long as it demonstrates competence and pragmatism. Specter’s presence in the Senate is the sort of assurance that moderates need to know that they’re actually being given a seat at the table and are not merely being used for their votes and then tossed aside.
Mr. Toomey (Specter’s apparent challenger), apparently under the delusion that the GOP is in some sort of position to purify the ranks, subscribes to the theory that Pennsylvania voters, including moderates and independents, will support a “true conservative” if only the voters will finally be presented with one. Is this true?
Luckily for us, we don’t have to make any wild guesses, because we’ve actually tried this out in real life before: in 2006, Pennsylvania Republicans ran a “true conservative” against a liberal with a moderate disposition — and it resulted in an 18-point landslide victory for the Democrats.
Have fun reading.