politics

Chasing Demons

April 28, 2004

The winner of the election that the Los Angeles Times has described as “a proxy fight over the GOP’s ideological direction” was decided shortly before 1 a.m. today, when Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter squeaked past right-wing challenger U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Toomey by a margin of just 16,000 votes.

As Knight-Ridder’s Steve Goldstein (registration required) noted, “The Republican right failed last night to exorcise the man it views as the party’s demon.”

In a disconnect that Campaign Desk first observed during the Democratic presidential primaries, both the press and pols declared this contest to be both one of the most closely-watched primary challenges in the nation and a possible signpost pointing to the future – yet voters could barely stay awake, or be bothered to actually cast a ballot. Only about 1.2 million of Pennsylvania’s 3.1 million registered Republicans voted.

Despite that, the Times’ Janet Hook called the contest “a high-profile test of strength between the party’s staunchest conservatives and its dwindling moderate wing – an ideological division that Bush had tried to straddle by defining himself as a `compassionate conservative.’ ”

With the final vote count – and Toomey’s concession speech – not coming until after midnight, Campaign Desk is willing to cut the political reporters of America a little slack on their initial dispatches. But we sure want to see them take a second crack at the race they touted as a High Noon between the GOP far-right and not-so-far-right.

And what we’d like to see in that day-after story is an examination of this:

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Is this ideological chasm supposedly dividing the Pennsylvania GOP real? Or is it the concoction of pollsters and handicappers – and the reporters who listen to them – rather than voters? And if this election was indeed some sort of surrogate for a larger national issue, does that mean no one is going to vote in November?

A harder story to nail down, perhaps. But then, the good ones always are.

–Susan Q. Stranahan

Susan Q. Stranahan wrote for CJR.