Back Channels: Likely challenger sees chance against Specter

Pat Toomey hasn't even officially become a Republican primary challenger to U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, and already he's making an impact in Washington.

Last week, Specter announced he would not support card check, effectively killing the labor movement's top legislative initiative - at least for now. Card check is shorthand for the Employee Free Choice Act, which Specter had previously supported. The bill would, depending on your perspective, bring fairness and a much-needed boost to union organizing, or do away with the secret ballot in labor elections and push companies out of business or overseas.

Specter's decision - and Toomey's influence - brought this reaction from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.): "Anyone who thinks they're burying card check because of Specter's statement in an effort to avoid a primary in Pennsylvania should not think this legislation is going to go away."

But Toomey, 47, a former congressman and the president of the Club for Growth, isn't going to go away either. Asked in an e-mail exchange if Specter's speech changed the calculus of the primary race, Toomey responded: "Not at all. It was quite predictable that Senator Specter would do a 180-degree reversal on card check as soon as he saw that he had a major primary-election problem."

Major is an understatement. In a Quinnipiac poll taken just before Specter's card-check decision, the incumbent trailed Toomey 41 percent to 27 percent among primary voters. A Susquehanna poll from last month had just 26 percent of Republicans saying they would support Specter, with 66 percent wanting someone new.

Specter beat Toomey in the 2004 primary, but only by 1.6 percentage points, and he needed the backing of President George W. Bush and Sen. Rick Santorum - both very popular among conservatives that year - to pull it off. Since then, many moderate Republicans in Pennsylvania have changed their registration, which could tilt a primary rematch Toomey's way.

Those same registration trends have some Republicans worried about their chances in the general election. Not Toomey.

"One of the reasons that so many Republicans left the party in recent years was because they were disappointed by the actions and behavior of elected Republicans," Toomey said in an interview. "They ran on a platform of fiscal discipline, limited government, and balanced budgets, but they went to Washington and exploded spending, set new records for earmarks, and, frankly, some engaged in corrupt activities.

"So it's not shocking that many Republicans decided that the party wasn't for them."

Now, he said, it's not just Republicans who are alarmed by Washington's spendthrift ways.

"People are increasingly distressed - and maybe that's not a strong enough word - to see serial bailouts, with hundreds of billions and now trillions of taxpayer dollars used to prop up failing businesses, and to launch wasteful spending programs that use staggering amounts of money we don't have to pay for things we don't need that will saddle our kids with mountains of debt."

Toomey was against the $700 billion bank bailout in the fall, and he said he would have voted against President Obama's $400 billion omnibus spending bill and his $787 billion stimulus package. Specter backed all three measures.

"What the Democrats are doing, with the aggressive complicity of Arlen Specter, is making things worse," Toomey said.

By 2010, he said, people will have doubts about leaving Washington in Democratic hands. "The way these guys are raising taxes, borrowing and spending money, and expanding government in all directions, voters will think there ought to be some brakes on that freight train," Toomey said.

Instead of the current policies, including the president's "disastrous" $3.6 trillion budget proposal, Senate candidate Toomey would push for the following:

Suspend or dramatically reduce payroll taxes. This would give workers more to save or spend and help employers lower costs and hire more workers.

Lower marginal corporate tax rates. "We have the highest corporate tax regime in the world," Toomey said. "Lowering those rates would go a long way toward leveling that playing field."

Lower the capital gains tax rate. Toomey said the rate could be cut to zero at this point with little cost to the Treasury, which would encourage investment.

Cut government spending - including the stimulus package. It will be years before most of that money is spent, Toomey said, so there is time to "cut back on the wild excesses in that bill."

Toomey expects to make an announcement about a Senate race "pretty soon." In the meantime, his ideas are worth listening to. Just ask Specter.