Ready to rumble?
As I pointed out in my column today, if Tom Ridge were to decide to run for Senate in Pennsylvania, he’d likely beat current Republican frontrunner Pat Toomey in the June GOP primary.
But Toomey’s boosters aren’t so terrified of the 35-point favorability rating edge the former two-term governor enjoys among Republicans over Toomey.
And it’s true that the Ridge race would be a tougher version of what they had been preparing for with Specter.
“Polls at this point can only tell you so much, but what are the grass roots and the people who really get involved in primaries thinking?” asked one Toomey insider. “There’s a lot of anti-incumbent rage out there. In the wake of these tea parties, are people in Pennsylvania going to be looking for an inside-the-Beltway candidate?”
The Toomey insider, who is a noted national Republican strategist, acknowledged that to win, Toomey would have to bring down Ridge’s numbers in order to be competitive in what would probably be an ugly race.
What’s interesting, though, is the ground on which he felt Ridge was most vulnerable. Not the social issues that may have cost him the 2008 vice presidential nomination, but on the economy and on “change.”
“When the economy was in very good shape, people could afford to spend a ton of time and energy hashing out these divisive social issues,” he said. “But in this climate – especially in Pennsylvania — people aren’t afforded that opportunity.”
The thinking is that among the small segment of Republican primary voters for whom abortion and other social issues are controlling factors, the moderate Ridge will loose by a wide margin to the conservative Toomey.
That means that Ridge will have to do better among the remainder of Republicans. Social issues are Toomey’s biggest natural advantage in the race. But rather than bludgeon Ridge on abortion, Toomey would try to deny Ridge the necessary margin among the rest of the Republican electorate.
It shows some savvy. But it also shows how tough the job will be for Toomey and his grass-roots, conservative ground troops in turning an anti-incumbent movement against a man who will have been out of office for 9 years come election time.
The strategist pointed to the troubles of Roy Blunt in Missouri, Jim Bunning and Specter as evidence of the anti-establishment current running through the GOP. Blunt’s problems certainly bear that out.
Toomey would bring a more passionate core group of followers to bear and already has substantial funding from the national organization of fiscal conservatives The Club for Growth. He is also helped by the shrinking of the Pennsylvania Republican Party down to a more conservative remnant after 2008.
But Ridge already has top-notch people and could easily gin up a fundraising effort that would match or defeat Toomey’s. Ridge would also be able to make the convincing argument in a state of savvy voters that he can beat Specter but Toomey likely could not. And in talking to Republicans around the state, they really, really want to beat Specter. Badly.
But Toomey is not one to back down from a challenge, and even the thought of a bruising primary might be enough to make Ridge think twice. It would be especially daunting if he knew that to beat Toomey he would have to stake out conservative positions that would hamper his abilities to beat Specter.
But Ridge is combat veteran and has more than a bit of, swagger. I assume he figures he can tap into the disgust i with the fat, sassy government to hold off Toomey but not go so far that he opens himself to being attacked as radical.
It would be hard to redefine a candidate as well known as Ridge. That’s why I think he’ll likely run.
