"Congressman Greenwood = hard core RINO
Congressional district ?=? suburban soft core RINOish"
Jim Greenwood is probably the most socially liberal "Republican" in the House. He makes Chris Shays of Connecticut seem like Ronald Reagan.
The 8th CD in Pennsylvania comprises all of Bucks County and tiny slivers of Montgomery County and of NE Philly. Lower Bucks is heavily blue-collar Democrat, socially moderate-to-conservative and economically liberal. Upper Bucks, where most of the voters are, is, for the most part, socially liberal-to-moderate and economically conservative. Overall, the district gave Bush 46.3% in 2000, although Republican performance is traditionally higher.
We will most likely end up with a RINOish candidate who will win handily. I would prefer that we run someone who was more conservative and take our chances against the weak Democrat candidate (although the RATs are trying to convince her to drop out so that they can name someone more prominent), but the decision will probably be made by the RINO establishment. Still, there is very little chance that the Republican candidate will be as liberal as Jim Greenwood, since I don't think there are any other Republicans that stoop that low in the entire state of Pennsylvania.
The fact that we will have to hustle to retain this seat provides further evidence that the PA Republicans dropped the ball on redistricting. They got greedy trying to draw a 13th district in Montoco and NE Philly to elect a Republican, and while Melissa Brown got 47% in 2002 and has a shot at winning this time around, the district only gave Bush 42.2% in 2000, which is even lower than in the old Montco-only 13th CD were Hoeffel couldn't be defeated. And the Republicans made the two suburban districts held by GOP incumbents that needed to be shored up (since Bush got below 50%) even less Republican than before, with Greenwood's district being 0.6% less Republican and Weldon's 7th CD being 0.3% less Republican (Bush got only 47.3% in the redrawn 7th). And because they wanted to give a Republican a chance to win the 13th, they also made the new 6th CD drawn for Jim Gerlach very marginal, with Bush getting 48.6% of the 2000 vote. What they should have done is appended the heavily Democrat townships in Lower Bucks to white parts of Philly and the most liberal townships in southern Montco to create a heavily Democrat district for a white Democrat, and then created two black-majority ditricts in Philly that go into Delco and Montco. That would have given Bush over 50% of the vote in each of Weldon's and Greenwood's CDs, as well as in the new CD for Gerlach. I'd rather have 3 safe GOP seats and 3 safe RAT seats in the Philly area than 2 safe RAT seats, 1 probable RAT seat and 3 swing districts.