By Alex Roarty
PoliticsPA Staff Writer
roarty@politicspa.com
PHILADELPHIA — A Sunday night debate between U.S. Senate candidates Republican Pat Toomey and Democrat Joe Sestak, for at least the first 30 minutes, was marked by rambunctious audience members who seemed more intent on interrupting the two men than hearing their response.
But when the animated and partisan crowd at La Salle University finally calmed down, the heat on stage turned up. Sestak and Toomey engaged in an unusually sharp debate that focused heavily on both men’s voting record and, perhaps surprisingly, very little on their mutual opponent, incumbent U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter.
That might be especially unexpected for Sestak, who polls show might need to make up as many as 20 points in his race against Specter with only five weeks to go. But the Senate hopeful seemed bent on showing Democrats statewide that, if he’s their nominee, he can go toe-to-toe with his Republican foe in the fall.
On this night, at least, that meant aggressively trying to characterize Toomey as a hypocrite on deficits, a topic the former Lehigh Valley congressman has constantly criticized President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress about. Sestak, in a point he reiterated throughout the roughly hour-long forum, said Toomey helped balloon the deficit when he voted to rid Congress of pay-as-you go spending, known as Pay-Go, in 2001.
“If he stood up to his party, why didn’t he vote to keep pay-as-you-go?” Sestak asked. “Because of that … they just took out a national credit card and added to the debt.”
Toomey said the congressman’s interpretation of his vote was incorrect, at one point even saying Sestak had a “very creative mind” but had gotten his facts wrong. The almost certain GOP Senate nominee blasted him for trying to portray himself as more concerned about the deficit, and Toomey touted tax cuts he supported as a congressman that he said grew the economy and and tax revenues.
In contrast, he said, Sestak supported last year the nearly $1 trillion stimulus and bailout packages while voting in favor of a massive health care bill that creates new entitlements.
“I don’t know how Joe can point a finger at me when it comes to budget deficits,” he said.
Toomey has made deficit reduction, lower taxes and opposition to the federal health care bill the central planks of his campaign this year. Raising taxes, he said again Sunday, will damage the economy while not erasing the budget gap.
“We gotta get spending under control,” he said, in a point he made numerous times during the debate. “There is no way to tax our way out of this hole.”
But Sestak was undeterred in his attempt to land a few body punches against his possible next opponent. Toomey’s tax-cutting priorities have already failed the country’s economy, he said.
“Look around this nation: Can anyone really believe that Pat Toomey’s George Bush’s, Arlen Specter’s, Rick Santorum’s policies worked?” he asked. “We experimented, and the results are what they are.”
Sunday’s debate was the second time the two men squared off after meeting in Allentown last September. This time the two men, particularly Sestak, seemed more eager to criticize their counterpart, although, like last year, they reiterated time and time again that they also respected each other as principled politicians.
“I believe (Sestak’s) a good man, and I think it’s unconscionable that Arlen Specter won’t come up here and defend,” Toomey said before being drowned out by an applauding the audience. “He won’t come up here and defend whatever it is that he believes at the moment.”
By the time of the primary, Specter and Sestak will have debated each other twice, with the second one set to be held in Philadelphia in the coming weeks. The challengers had asked for six debates, one in each media market.
Also unlike last year’s debate, the one held at La Salle featured several audience members who interrupted the candidates during their responses to questions, which came from the crowd. As if setting the tone, the first questionnaire asked Toomey if he supported that “nut” Sarah Palin before being shouted down by many in the audience.
The moderator had to threaten to remove several people because of repeated interruptions while repeatedly imploring the crowd to mute its reactions until the end, which it finally complied with after 30 minutes of near pandemonium.
Sestak’s strategy to engage Toomey while largely ignoring Specter might surprise some observers, particularly after news broke Saturday when former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum said he endorsed Specter in 2004 in exchange for unconditional support for President Bush’s Supreme Court nominees. But the Democrat, who added that he knows he’ll defeat Specter, said he thought he had something to prove about how he could handle Toomey.
“I thought I should make it pretty obvious to everybody that he and I are going to be in the general election together, and I wanted people to understand that, yes, we can and we have twice gone toe-to-toe,” Sestak told reporters afterward.
He added that because Specter was a Republican for 29 years, arguing against Toomey’s policies was the same as arguing against Specter’s.
Tags: Joe Sestak, Joe Sestak for Senate, Pat Toomey, Pat Toomey for Senate, Pat Toomey Joe Sestak debate
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I would amplify on this iteration by focusing upon defining-moments:
My contribution-to-the-cause was, as questioner #4, to request that Joe foreswear support for the upcoming V.A.T. After he restated his preferred talking-points, it was necessary for me to remind him of my focused-query; he then asserted he opposed this level of superimposed taxation.
I also reminded him and his staff of the contents of the appended handout [which I also supplied to the La Salle “Political Science” professor]; included therein is the still-pending request for documentation to support his claim [uttered a fortnight ago @ the Frankford-neighborhood (in lower NE-Philly) Baptist Church] that “Three of Four Medical Malpractice Suits have been found to be fraudulent.” That these quotations document empowerment of Sibelius to impose rationing, this is a concern that remains under-reported.
Many of Joe’s sound-bites were appealing, such as his intent to engage in “principled compromise, and never to compromise on principles.” He invited those in the year-old Tea Party Movement and the weeks-old Coffee-Klatch Groupings to meet together.
The claims/counter-claims regarding Pay-Go and Medicare-D cry for clarification. Regarding the former, it appeared that Pat elucidated a clear distinction between the postures of the candidates: when confronted with the prospect of approving a new program, Pat would mandate cuts elsewhere…while Joe would either cut OR raise taxes to ensure budget-neutrality. Regarding the latter, it appeared that Joe retreated a bit from his initial claim that Joe had supported expansion of Medicare Rx-benefits; apparently (if I heard this clearly), he claimed Pat had supported holding a vote on this bill and then had absented himself from the actual voting, only two hours hence.
Pat, of course, was perceivable (by me) as far more lucid. This was dramatized when he noted [without any refutation from Joe] that the current deficit was unsustainable [as corroborated last week by the CBO]. He noted that Greece (which was just bailed-out by the E.U.) has a deficit of 12% of GDP…as that in America has risen to 11% of GDP; he then cited the warning from Moody’s that the “AAA”-Rating (enjoyed by America since WW-II) has become jeopardized…yielding the risk that future borrowing-power would become crimped.
One source of enjoyment was that both eschewed invoking the “waste/fraud/abuse” garbage-can; they know this is a rhetorical-evasion. It is totally unrealistic to think that one can “raise revenue” of any magnitude by “finding savings” within the nooks/crannies of the budget.
In my view, the “scoring” would have to accommodate the lack of any “concession” by Pat (within any realm of argument), while Joe appeared to have lost debating-points when he constantly linked Pat to Bush-’43 (after Pat had meticulously disclaimed such fealty). Indeed, in his Opening Statement, Pat cited his leadership of the Club for Growth as both a metaphor for his entire economic philosophy and a methodology for achieving realistic derivative policies.
These observations harken-back to my first conversation with him—held a year ago—after Guzzardi had invited me to a high-roller fund-raiser in Center City Philly I will provide the vignette, and the reader is invited to draw independent conclusions therefrom:
I carefully invoked perhaps a minute of face-time with the candidate. I introduced myself (he knows Guzzardi’s commitments that started two years prior to his first senate race) and muttered that I had served as the President of the PA Society of Internal Medicine in the mid-1990’s…and that I had some independent experience/knowledge/training in healthcare-related policies that he might wish to invoke. His reply was, simply to cite John Goodman [National Center for Policy Analysis] as a reference for his overall HealthCare program. [He has also, subsequently, noted the utility of The National Center for Public Policy Research.] It is important to appreciate the candor of the exchange we held in this regard, for it illustrates his no-nonsense approach to his effort to rescue America from the morass (and, not incidentally, to lead internal GOP reform). He said, essentially, “Thank you very much but we have that covered” without being glib; he matter-of-factly cited Goodman, and that was that. No, he didn’t try to cajole me, covertly seeking maximal-$$$; he simply stated it “as it is.” Not egocentric, merely pragmatic. This was not symptomatic of a close-minded individual, for his staff continues to accommodate input such as the appended-digest of ObamaCare; rather, this was reflective of the tenor of a goal-oriented intensity which permeates all of his strategizing.
One more point-of-interest that characterizes my observation of his character, citing his book Road to Prosperity as a foundational-document:
When he was endorsed by Romney @ a Press Conference @ Loew’s a few months ago [note photo*, appended], I asked two somewhat-pointed questions, one of each individual. RomneyCare was portrayed as a state-level experiment, enhanced over gubernatorial objections by the Massachusetts Legislature. Pat restated opposition to governmental support of industries that might otherwise function at a competitive disadvantage internationally (e.g., Kvaerner), an issue that continues to be debated…in today’s WSJ. Again, he demonstrated having already thought-through the issue on multiple-planes…and the ability to distill his personal analysis of the forces at-play. [To me, both issues remain problematic, but I’m neither familiar with the blow-by-blow in Boston, nor am I a well-trained economist.]
{*-As I posed, I looked-up to Romney and inquired as to whether I was amidst the 2012 POTUS-Ticket. His reflex-response: “Oh really? I didn’t know you were running!”}
For an opposing perspective, note the superficial/accusatory/sound-bitten output of the DNC. In any case, I continue to relate with the staffs of both candidates, to whatever degree I can remain unobtrusive. [My problem with Joe includes his support for the Goldstone Report and his opposition to a nonbinding letter that emphasized the importance of maintaining a high-quality US-Israel relationship. But no one can doubt his energies, as illustrated in a puff-piece in Sunday’s Inqy.] If this extended-discussion has provoked queries from the ~300 people who are now receiving it, I will work to convey them to whomever…and then to provide a detailed response.