Haunting Specter Rep. Pat Toomey is giving the GOP's worst senator a run for his money
Interview, The Spectator
Haunting Specter The Spectator Interview: Patrick Toomey A brash young congressman is stoking the conservative base and giving one of the Senate's archetypal liberal Republicans a run for his...
...And I fear the real cost will be even greater...
...TOOMEY I'm a better bet to hold the seat than Arlen Specter is...
...TAS U.S...
...TOOMEY We'll see how that plays out, but I'm not going to worry too much about it...
...This time Joe Hoeffel, a threeterm congressman from Philadelphia, is arguably the Democratic front runner, and he's certainly a credible candidate...
...TAS Money—the current figures are that Senator Specter's got an $8 million war chest, while you're back at $1.5 million...
...Senator Santorum is the chairman of the Republican caucus...
...TAS Are you worried about them signing up Democrats for Specter...
...We discovered that my name ID was at 55 percent...
...The frightening thing for conservatives is that President Bush may well have the opportunity to appoint at least one new Supreme Court justice and probably a Chief Justice as well...
...ANY TERM- LIMITED congressmen happily flee Washington for the joys of civilian life...
...It's standard operating procedure for every administration to endorse their party's incumbents...
...TOOMEY Not at all...
...The headline is: 'Stop This Man.' If he's reelected, Senator Specter will in all likelihood become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee...
...Not a direct call, not an indirect call...
...This past fall the Democratic candidate for governor beat the Republican candidate for governor in my district by a double-digit margin...
...Are you worried about being tagged 'not a team player...
...TAS But he's obviously very electable—we're talking about a blue' state here...
...He's vulnerable because he doesn't have a strong base...
...Unfortunately, since we had that vote, it's become apparent that the bill will cost more than even the CBO auditors had projected...
...TOOMEY The President has to decide where to use his political capital...
...OCTOBER 2003 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 23 THE SPECTATOR INTERVIEW TAS Someone once credited him with 'hitting the game-winning RBI' against Judge Bork's Supreme Court nomination . . . . TOOMEY Yes he did—for the other side...
...They never persuaded me...
...I'm convinced that lowering taxes, lowering government spending, and reducing the role of government in the economy is the best way to achieve job growth and higher wages for workers...
...TAS Not a one...
...Voters are looking for an alternative...
...Toomey talked with The American Spectator at his Capitol Hill office...
...manufacturing jobs have been in decline since at least the 1970s...
...TOOMEY I don't need to match the funds that he has...
...TAS You did a poll recently...
...And then there are plenty of independents and Democrats who find a consistent, principled message appealing...
...What do you think...
...I can't criticize him on this—his proposed budgets have been more responsible than what Congress ends up passing...
...Any particular reason...
...TOOMEY The most interesting statistic is that we did a very, very, very modest media buy, in about a quarter of the state, and then we did a poll to see if it had any impact...
...TAS On the other hand, you voted this summer for the latest monster entitlement, the prescription-drug bill...
...TOOMEY There are a lot of reasons...
...TAS How are you at attracting crossover votes...
...TAS But then you look at things like tariffprotectionfor steel, the outrageous farmbills...
...I don't like the term 'privatize'—it sends the wrong message...
...Your district is a case in point—it used to be the home of Bethlehem Steel...
...His unabashed conservatism plays straight into Specter's weakness with the GOP base—a potentially fatal flaw in April's closed primary...
...And amongst that 55 percent, we were dead-even on the ballot test...
...He absolutely has to support an incumbent...
...TAS We'll buy that, but the White House, the Republican National Committee, the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, even your fellow Pennsylvanian Rick Santorum, have all lined up behind his reelection bid...
...But that also means he's vulnerable when the Democrats field a strong candidate—as happened in 1992, when he was held to under 50 percent by someone who wasn't, quite frankly, the best candidate in the world...
...So I don't think the president has any choice...
...And right now he is undermining three of President Bush's judicial nominees...
...This is the first opportunity we've had since Medicare was created to make some really profound reforms, which were embodied in that bill—allowing competition and choices for senior citizens, creating a dynamic marketplace of insurance products rather than the government command-control health care that Medicare is...
...TOOMEY There's a culture in Washington...
...Are we selling people false hopes...
...TAS We're happy to see our friends at National Review put Senator Specter on their cover this summer as 'The Worst Republican Senator.' But in the spirit of fair and balanced,' we wonder whether Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island ought to get the nod...
...With Senator Specter as Judiciary Committee chairman, I don't see how a conservative nominee will have a chance...
...Haunting Specter The Spectator Interview: Patrick Toomey A brash young congressman is stoking the conservative base and giving one of the Senate's archetypal liberal Republicans a run for his money...
...TOOMEY I'm not a 'big government' conservative...
...In the last election, the other side spent a million dollars attacking me and I still got 57 percent of the vote...
...TAS Are you worried that Senator Specter is going to lean on prominent conservatives who have campaigned for him in the past—say, Paul Weyrich—to come out for him one more time...
...The President has to decide where to use his political capital...
...A better approach would be a much more modest bill that would provide a prescription-drugs benefit to the truly needy and a catastrophic support for middle-class people, but would be means tested and much less costly...
...Especially since, being 73 already, he's unlikely to worry about ever having to face Republican voters again...
...They don't want to be told who to vote for...
...Is this some kind ofstealth Keynesian pump-priming exercise...
...TAS How did you escape the government department at Harvard without becoming a liberal...
...We will be outspent by a wide margin, and that's fine...
...He's had to fight some very tough battles on lowering taxes, on trade, on this war...
...Senate, Arlen Specter, pay for two decades of liberal mischief-making, by taking him on in next year's Republican primary...
...So I build a coalition starting from the center right, very much the 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2003 way Rick Santorum does...
...I'm trying to push for that...
...TOOMEY Not everybody has a degree in economics, so I think it's perfectly reasonable to remind people that the reason we're so aggressively promoting opening foreign markets, lowering taxes, reining in wasteful spending is, in part, because it will result in job growth...
...But if the President had not put the tariffs on steel, I doubt that we would have had the votes to pass the bill giving him last-track' authority to negotiate trade deals...
...TOOMEY Absolutely not...
...TOOMEY Their voting records may be similar, but Senator Specter does a lot more damage...
...The voters in the Pennsylvania Republican primary—as I think is true with voters generally these days—are pretty independent...
...But at anything like the current levels, it's a no-brainer for me to oppose any tax increases...
...And yet President Bush has just created an undersecretary for manufacturing jobs...
...This is a man who throughout his career has destroyed the nominations of conservative jurists at every level of the federal bench, including the Supreme Court...
...TAS Why should the GOP dump a powerful senior Senator, a four-time winner in a swing state that could go Democratic in a heartbeat, in favor of an obscure congressman, no matter how wonderful...
...TAS Have you had any calls from the White House, saying 'Don't do it...
...There are a lot of fiscal conservatives who are independents...
...TOOMEY Never...
...What that confirms is what we have suspected all along—it's just a matter of getting my name and my message out there and we win...
...If the Federal tax level were half of what it was, then I suppose we could have a debate...
...That means 51 Republicans get in a room and elect someone to be their leader, and to try to maintain party unity...
...I fundamentally believe that we're overtaxed as a society...
...TOOMEY I voted against the farm bill—the sheer magnitude of subsidy and price imports and all of that artificial nonsense is very hard for me to justify in any way...
...TOOMEY Not one...
...The other problem with Senator Specter is that so many conservatives will never pull his ballot—they'll skip over that race...
...TOOMEY Bill Clinton carried my district twice...
...Al Gore beat George Bush in my district...
...TOOMEY It shouldn't...
...My predecessor was a Democrat...
...It works, at least in Pennsylvania...
...TOOMEY That was a very tough decision...
...Myjob is to let them know I'm out there, that I'm a credible alternative with a conservative message and a conservative voting record, and that I can win the race...
...There are a lot of social conservatives who are Democrats...
...TOOMEY I don't think Senator Specter is the kind of guy who can inspire that kind of conversion...
...Ifyou make it clear to senior citizens that you're not talking about changing the rules of the game for them—that would be unfair and I would never advocate it—and that the goal is to make it possible for their kids and their grandkids to have a viable retirement security program, then seniors are OK with that...
...TOOMEY I have tremendous, energetic support from Republicans, first of all...
...TAS Nonetheless, we've been on a spending spree for the past several years...
...What he depends on is a huge crossover from Democrats...
...He's had to fight some very tough battles on lowering taxes...
...Harvard-educated and a former international banker, Toomey is anything but quixotic...
...TAS In a blue-collar district that went for Clinton and Gore, in a state with the largest retiree population outside Florida, you ran and won on a platform of privatizing Social Security...
...TAS Have you ever voted for a tax increase...
...they just cannot bring themselves to vote for him...
...But I'm a big advocate of allowing workers to accumulate savings and getting away from the idea of Social Security as an intergenerational transfer, which is what it has always been...
...And with a one-vote Senate majority, you can imagine how disruptive it would be for the White House to come out against a sitting Republican...
...TOOMEY I came from a Catholic high school in Providence, Rhode Island, and I was actually shocked when I got to Harvard and I discovered this mindset, this culture—not just liberal, but tinged with anti-Americanism...
...Just knowing that someone else was out there and knowing my name was enough to bring me dead-even...
...TAS How do you do that as an avowed conservative...
...TAS Your Web site banners: 'Lower taxes, Less Government, More Personal Freedom.' I didn't see jobs' in there, which seems to be the mania in Washington these days...
...The mentality is, 'Don't just stand there, spend something.' TAS Even our estimable President seems to have been infected...
...Why does that issue so terrify the GOP...
...TOOMEY I don't believe in Keynesian economics—you pay a greater price with the economic downturn that comes after...
...Without that, we wouldn't have had a Singapore free trade agreement, we wouldn't have had a Chile free trade agreement, we wouldn't have the other six that are on their way...
...He uses his position in the Senate and his seniority to actively undermine the conservative agenda...
...What we need to do is establish a viable presence in the minds of the Republican voters—the dissatisfaction with Senator Specter will do the rest...
...What were the highlights...
...Pat Toomey, 41, now serving his third term from Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, has a different idea of retirement: making one of the pillars of the U.S...
...One is well articulated in today's Wall Street Journal, on the editorial page...
...OCTOBER 2003 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 25...
...PATRICK TOOM TAS So what's going on...
Vol. 36 • October 2003 • No. 5
