Posted on 11/09/2004 6:55:39 AM PST by Hugenot
Exit polls reveal that President Bush may have miscalculated in endorsing pro-abortion Republican Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter in his primary battle against conservative challenger Pat Toomey.
Immediately following his narrow win, Specter was quick to declare his independence from the President and re-assert his pro-abortion credentials.
After his November 2 win, Specter repeated the mantra, asserting that if he were to become Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, pro-life judges need not apply.
Originally believing that a strong GOP Senate candidate in Pennsylvania could put the state's 21 electoral votes in the Bush column, the President campaigned with Specter and helped him squeak out a win against Toomey. Conventional wisdom had suggested that Toomey would be a weaker candidate in the general election.
Needless to say, Bush's endorsement of Specter angered pro-life Republicans across the state, and now exit polls suggest that many of them did not show up to vote on election day.
While national polls indicate that moral values was the number one priority for 22% of all voters, only 18% of Pennsylvania voters listed moral values as their top priority. Since 80% of these "moral values" voters nationwide supported the President, their lower turnout in Pennsylvania probably gave Kerry his narrow margin of victory in the Keystone State.
Furthermore, while Catholic voters played a major role in Ohio and Florida, Pennsylvania Catholics did not turn out in force for the President.
Nationwide, Catholics voted for Bush (52 – 47) and by wider margins in Ohio (55 – 44) and Florida (57 – 42). But Pennsylvania Catholics voted for Kerry by a margin of 51 – 49.
What do these numbers mean? That Bush will further alienate his base if he allows Specter to Chair the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Oops. Should've endoorsed TOOMEY!
Endorsement of a Judas who belongs on the far back bench with Jeffords.
Frankly, after reading about all of the vote fraud in PA, I wouldn't buy any of these statistics.
True, and it ain't rocket science: Bush won because of an energized base.
Arlen Specter is going to energize the Republican base???? On what planet?
Bad karma.
No campaign is perfect, and some screw ups are unavoidable.
The best thing for Bush to do now is to put some distance between himself and Specter by keeping Specter off the Judiciary Committee.
would really sent the RIGHT message.
Nonsense..
Pure bunk. Nobody stayed home on Nov 2nd and not cast a vote against John Kerry out of spite.
Crinkle, crumple, and toss into the garbage
miscalculation bump
No. Bush lost Pennsylvania because of voter fraud in Philthadelphia. There is no other reason. If satan was running as a dem, you would still have 100% voter turnout for satan.
When will GOP leaders learn:
1) ignore the MSM because the MSM hates the GOP and wants them to lose.
2) the GOP's natural constituency is attracted to those who stand on principle. Backing Spectre instead of Toomey makes Bush look like an opportunist instead of a man of principle.
" WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH"
The lines were the longest that I have ever seen in my 33 years of voting. This is nonsense.
I've emailed and called most of the GOP Senators that will be voting on the chairmanship. I strongly voiced my opposition to Senator Specter.
Bush doesn't allow anything. It is a Senate decision, not the President's. Bush should not have any direct or overt involvement.
Spot On!
I always marvel at how people will say, "No, he lost it because of THIS reason," "No he lost it because of THIS reason."
Come on, can you not conceive that there may have been more than one way Bush could have improved his vote total. YES, there wa vote fraud; YES the GOP ground game was better in Ohio than in Penn.; but also, YES, Bush came off as an opportunist rather than a committed pro-lifer when he sided with Specter over Toomey. Voters rarely agree with a party straight down the line; backing Specter over Toomey gave faithful Catholics one less reason to support Bush.
I think this article is bogus: another one of the old media's attempts to create division in the GOP and have fun at our expense. I do NOT like Specter, but I think the WH should stay out of it, and I do think we need to inoculate our judicial nominees by allowing him to be chairman. (Even though that makes me nauseous.) That sends the message that WE play by the rules and that WE allow diversity of thought in our party, unlike the Dems. Besides, we need him and the majority too badly to further alienate him.
This is a stretch and highly doubtful.
In my circle of family, friends, and co-workers, Id guess 10 family, and combined 25 close friends/co-workers that were all voting for Bush..
If you asked them who Pat Toomey was, maybe 2 of them could tell you who Pat Toomey is, and it didn't bother them one bit what Bush/Spector did.
Bush's remarks cost him less than 0.1% of the vote in PA that he lost by over 2%.
Bush did not lose PA over Toomey, anyone who says otherwise are nuts in the head.
The point is that an energized base makes the effort to get out and votes, in spite of their busy lives. And GOP voters are busy with their families and with making money -- they tend not to be people who live for politics.
A base that isn't energized doesn't turn out in as high of numbers. This would be true if the issue were to have been the President supporting a Senator who favored higher taxes against a primary challenger who wanted to cut them.
The entire base needs to be energized for the GOP to win, and that includes social conservatives. I'm not saying that the this cost Bush PA, but it can't have helped.
TOTAL BS.! I volunteered in PA.
Bush did well in PA (especially the more conservative areas of the state).
The reason Bush lost PA is the county heads of these four counties did a horrible job of getting out the vote for Bush.
Bush, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery county.
The heads of these county republican committees should be smacked upside the head.!
Look at these counties' results and also the registration by party numbers
http://www.electionreturns.state.pa.us/default.aspx?control=StatewideReturnsByCounty&ElecID=1&ID=1
Bucks
KERRY, JOHN F. (DEM) 162,220
BUSH, GEORGE W. (REP) 153,424
Registration
171,598 (DEM)
207,249 (REP)
3,020 (LIB)
888 (GRN)
64,371 (OTHER)
447,126 (Total)
Chester
KERRY, JOHN F. (DEM) 108,670
BUSH, GEORGE W. (REP) 119,106
Registration
98,765 (DEM)
170,419 (REP)
1,864(LIB)
738 (GRN)
52,961 (OTHER)
324,747 (Total)
Delaware
KERRY, JOHN F. (DEM) 157,531
BUSH, GEORGE W. (REP) 116,728
Registration-DELAWARE
132,130 (Dem)
215,474 (Rep)
1,323 (lib)
619 (grn)
41,368 (other)
390,914 (total)
Montgomery
KERRY, JOHN F. (DEM) 217,342
BUSH, GEORGE W. (REP) 172,206
Registration-MONTGOMERY
214,233 (Dem)
268,755 (Rep)
3,241 (lib)
1,025 (grn)
77,707 (other)
564,961 (total)
Total Registration PENNSYLVANIA
3,966,293 (dem)
3,386,434 (rep)
34,003 (lib)
15,525 (grn)
913,719 (other)
8,315,97 (total)
http://www.dos.state.pa.us/bcel/cwp/view.asp?a=1099&Q=444853&PM=1
and compare that to the performance of the rest of the counties in PA.
These @ssclowns (in these 4 counties) dropped the ball.! Santorum better smack them around before they cost him re-election in 2006.
Hmmmmn.
Didn't think about this point.
Good observation.
(Did ANY other pro-abort repubbie win in a red state?)
Concur. Every patriot voted on Nov. 2.
The base here was maxed out.. Trust me on this..
As long as Dems are opening up a 350,000-400,000 vote leads out of Philadelphia, there isn't enough votes in the "T" to make up for it.
Those counties are all well within reach of the Philly thugs.
Don't doubt for a second that they didn't have there grubby fingers on things in Bucks, Montgomery, and Delaware counties.
Hopefully, we will get to the point where support is given for principle instead of good ole boy politics. Today we hear Chafee is staying a Repub. Oh great. How lucky we are. Let these RINO's go.
Let them who want to leave the party leave. Could it cost us the majority? Yes. I would hate that, but at least we would have loyalty based on principle instead of loyalty based on what pork you will let me write into some bill.
Bush choose politics over life at the moment of truth. Let's see if that really helped Bush.
Hmm..Interesting. ...spin? a week after the election? :/
W has forgotten Reagan's example, and too often will select the squish over the principled candidate. Hence supporting Specter over Toomey. I don't know whether Toomey would have won but I bet Bush would have done better, and I would like to have given Toomey a chance. Now we're stuck with Arlen, and he will give us grief, you can bank on it.
Actual voter results from precincts of known religious, ethnic, and politcal make-up, as opposed to these worthless exit polls which showed the President losing Pennsylvania by 18 points, contradict these assertions.
President Bush's best showing in Philadelphia was in Ward 26, where he got 47.4% of the vote. Ward 26 is 78% Catholic by religious affiliation, 71% Democrat/26% Republican by political affiliation, 71% Italian/14% Irish/5% German by ethnicity. By way of contrast, Ward 26 voted only 45.6% for Rick Santorum in 2000.
If Bush did better this year than Santorum, who is an ethnic Italian Catholic, did in 2000, how would Toomey, who is a similarly conservative ethnic Irish Catholic have helped him garner more? Is not Ward 26 full of exactly the sort of crossover conservative Catholic Democrats you are claiming Toomey would have helped the President appeal to?
This ward was no exception either. Other heavily Catholic areas, such as Wards 64 and 55 in Mayfair and Ward 66 in Torresdale/Parkwood, and Ward 63 in Fox Chase in the northeast section of the city, were the next most heavily Republican areas for Bush, with about 45% of the vote. They are all around 60-70% Catholic and are the most heavily Catholic neighborhoods in the city.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1271887/posts
In fact, there is an almost direct correlation between the density of Catholics in Philadelphia and its immediate suburbs, and the percentage of vote for President Bush.
I agree. This is just silly, wishful thinking.
Specter won the most votes of any politican in Pennsylvania in recent times. He certainly energized something.
How is it that Specter took Lancaster and York Counties by higher margins than President Bush did? How would Toomey have created the same result in a way that woudl benefit the president?
What a crock, Bush lost PA because of Philly, pure and simple.... spin is not honorable regardless which side is using it.
Philly Turnout in 2000 - 55%
Philly Turnout in 2004 - 60%
PA turnout in 2000 - 63%
PA turnout in 2004 - 68%
Do you know anything about what you are talkign about?
Do not alienate your base Mr President...there are many other republicans up for relection..
Even Mr. Rove stated that in '04 millions of Christians stayed away from the voting booth...
Spector is poison to the Republican Party...he is a liberal dem on the issues near and dear to the hearts of your Christian base support...
Hey Boom,
Unfortunately there are not enough chemicals in the state to sanitize Philadelphia.
FYI
...*&* FWIW.
Toomey would have been sent packing had he been the candidate this year. I know some folks here are on the Toomey bandwagon, but reality is, had he won, he would have lost... pure and simple.
Specter is done in 6 years, by then I doubt his health will be such that he can manage another term... PA will continue like the midwest to move further Red, and in 6 years, with no Specter on the ballot, someone like a Toomey may have a chance. Today however, he would have lost handily.
Sometimes folks here let their passions obscure them from facts.
Definitely...
United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-5225
Fax: (202) 224-9102
To clarify, "had he won, he would have lost" = "had he won the primary he would have lost the general"
Codswallop. Every pro-life voter in PA knew that Jim Clymer (Constitution Party) was running in that race on that issue. They could have showed up to vote for him, if they cared at all about the issue. Clymer got almost 217,000 votes, which is very respectable for a 3rd party candidate.
Nobody in PA who really cared about the issue stayed away from the polls because of Specter. Nobody. If "moral values" didn't have the votes in PA that it had elsewhere, it's because those issues didn't have the traction in PA that they had elsewhere, period.
So given that there was a highly visible, strongly pro-life candidate in the Senate race, how did the pro-life, anti-Specter voters vote in the Presidential race? Did they vote for Kerry? Ridiculous. Did they vote for Bush? This article says no. They must have voted for Peroutka, the pro-life Constitution Party candidate.
So we can measure the size of this anti-Specter/anti-Bush constituency by looking at how many votes Peroutka got in Pennsylvania. It was 6,464 votes. Kerry's margin of victory was around 127,000 votes. Bush's endorsement of Specter did not remotely cost him Pennsylvania. That's just more Bush-bashing from the right, as if the country needed it.
heres my favorite Specter thread...http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1145003/posts
Don't try reasoning with the anti-specter crowd here with facts.. they are sort of like the Dems in regards to that topic, unable to see or understand the political realities of PA. (And many of them have never set foot in the state either)
Amen!
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