I hope Toomey keeps up the momentum. It's a long time till the election.
" Specter eked by with an underwhelming 36% and Haabestad got 33%"
A shame. Haabestad was then the state GOP Chairman and a former "Princeton Basketball star" according to an article.
Billyboy: . "But the ONE area where the two parties HAVE completely "switched sides" is trade policies -- the GOP used to be the protectionist party and the Dems used to be the "expand free trade with everyone" party."
Foreign policy is another. The capital D Democrats of the 19th Century were the Manifest Destiny party. Whig Lincoln and other proto-Republicans were opposed to "Imperialism" the Mexican War for example. By the late part of the Century the conservative Bourbon Democrats were railing against the "Imperialism" of Benjamin Harrison and the Republicans. I don't know what was behind that switch.
The trade switch though I think I get. Republicans were the more pro-Industry and business party. Way back when industry supported protectionism. In the 20th century business eventually came to largely oppose it (not soon enough IMO, Republicans passed a disastrous tariff under Hoover). While the labor unions who came to own the rat party became and remain to this day mostly in favor of protectionism.
There is still plenty of cross-over (including amongst those of you I pinged ;) ), some fair trade Republicans mostly in the Midwest (and PA) and parts of the south (which used to be the free trade hot bed, wanting to sell cotton abroad) and some mostly free trade democrats.
PNTR for China caused major disagreements among conservatives as I remember.
PNTR for China passed in Congress with a coalition of the most ardently pro-free-trade conservatives and the most ardently leftist (and thus Communist friendly) Democrats. I’m about as pro-free-trade as it gets, but I don’t see what’s so “free” about trade with a country in which the Communist Party owns 10% of all industries and that doesn’t protect out intellectual property. I also have qualms about GATT, since it undermines our sovereignty to allow some anti-American panel tell Congress and the president what they can do. I would much prefer a system of bilateral free-trade agreements with every country willing to sign them with us (and willing to abide by them).