The Keystone State Insurgency You Probably Haven’t Heard About
I didn’t know Pennsylvania had earthquakes.
Maybe not geophysical, but definitely electoral (HT Club for Growth):
‘Earthquake in Pennsylvania’
By Brad Bumsted and Debra Erdley
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, May 17, 2006Angry taxpayers on Tuesday tossed out the two Republican Senate leaders who helped engineer last year’s legislative pay raise, an issue that apparently cost 15 House members their jobs, too.
Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Jubelirer of Altoona, and Senate Majority Leader David Brightbill of Lebanon County conceded to their challengers, becoming the first lawmakers in major leadership posts to lose a primary election in 42 years. The House defeats would be the most since 1980.
“We have had a dramatic earthquake in Pennsylvania,” said Jubelirer, a 32-year legislator.
The defeats of Jubelirer and Brightbill “will send shock waves throughout he political establishment for years to come,” said Mike Young, a retired Penn State University political science professor.
Brightbill, 63, a lawmaker since 1982, lost to Mike Folmer, 50, a tire salesman who served briefly on Lebanon City Council and preached a message that it’s “time for Republicans to be Republicans again.” Brightbill came under fire for becoming a tax-and-spend career politician.
“The people have spoken,” Jubelirer, 69, said shortly after congratulating his challenger, Blair County Commissioner John Eichelberger. “They have said this is a time for change. It is a historic year.”Eichelberger, 47, said the race was about redefining the Republican Party.
More celebratory commentary is here.
Pennsylvania’s entrenched pachyderms critically blundered by committing a mistake so visible and so arrogant that it essentially got every conservative’s angry attention.
Long-suffering Ohio center-righters, whose GOP leadership is surely as faux conservative as Pennsylvania’s was until Tuesday, must be asking “could you guys and gals please hurry up and do something just as dumb so that people wake up?”
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Side Note 1: The WORMs (Worn-out Reactionary Media, known to most as The Mainstream Media) have been awfully quiet about Tuesday’s races in Pennsylvania. Can you imagine similar silence if, say, a couple of antiwar newbies won nominations? Neither can I.
Side Note 2: Apparently crashing soldiers’ funerals to share antiwar sentiments with their families in their hour of grief wasn’t problematic enough to deter Pennsylvania’s Democrats from renominating Catherine Baker Knoll for Lieutenant Governor. Zheesh.
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UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal today, in a subscription-only piece (”Harrisburg Hogs”), notes the significance of Tuesday’s results, and reveals a great campaign tactic one of the challengers used (in bold):
If Republican leaders in Washington still think their break-the-bank spending won’t cause trouble with voters in November, they’d better pay attention to what just happened in the Quaker State’s elections.
It is an understatement to say Pennsylvania conservatives were in a nasty mood. Despite the fact that conservative challengers were outspent on average 8 to 1 in these races, the two top senate leaders were thrown out and 13 incumbent House members bit the dust.
In a Mt. Lebanon race, 21-year-old-college student Mark Harris delivered a stunning defeat to long-time big-government incumbent Tom Stevenson. Mr. Stevenson tried to save his job by attacking Mr. Harris as too young and inexperienced to hold office, but Mr. Harris responded by sending the incumbent a copy of “Economics for Dummies.” That tactic evidently sealed Mr. Stevenson’s fate. (We can think of many Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who would benefit from that book.)
“All the incumbent Republicans who lost were complicit in the advancement of [Democratic Governor] Ed Rendell’s borrow, tax and spend agenda” notes Matt Brouillette, the president of the conservative Commonwealth Foundation. Over the past three years the GOP majorities in the House and Senate have expanded the budget by twice the inflation rate and rubber-stamped an unpopular Rendell income tax hike.
