Toomey’s censure shows Lehigh County GOP stuck in past
Sen. Pat Toomey won’t be losing sleep over being censured by his hometown Lehigh County Republican Committee.
Other Republicans should.
The more sour grapes the Grand Old Party grows, the less grand it becomes.
Tuesday night’s censure of a former darling of the local party further divides the party. It will turn off more Republicans who are moderate and freethinking.
Party leaders, locally and nationally, are stuck in the past. And that’s not good for the GOP’s future.
They remain obsessed with pleasing Donald Trump, even after he was voted out of office. They remain obsessed with punishing lame-duck Toomey — long considered to be the epitome of a Republican — nearly a month after his vote to convict the former president at his impeachment trial last month.
The censure of Toomey and other Republican senators who voted to convict Trump may appease the Trump branch of the GOP. But that is a captive audience. The GOP brain trust doesn’t have to please them. They will always vote Republican.
It should instead appease members who don’t worship Trump, and who were so turned off by him that they voted for Joe Biden or left the party.
Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats nationally and in Pennsylvania. So party leaders should be looking for ways to appeal to moderate Democrats who may not be happy with their party. Censuring someone for voting their conscience isn’t going to score points with those people.
The party is thinking small when it should be thinking big.
I wonder if Tuesday’s vote by the Lehigh County GOP was done just to impress those higher up at the state and national levels. Hey, look what we did!
I don’t see how it’s going to advance the party locally, which is what the committee should be focused on. In fact, it could set the party back.
The committee’s acting chairman is Tim Ramos. He is the sole Republican
candidate for Allentown mayor. Winning in a Democratic city already is a challenge. It hasn’t happened in more than 20 years, since William Heydt served as mayor from 1994 to 2002.
As acting chairman, Ramos is the public face of the vote to censure Toomey. How is that going to play with the moderate Democratic vote that Ramos should be courting in Allentown? Or with independent voters, some of whom recently may have left the GOP because they couldn’t stomach it anymore?
I’m surprised it took the Lehigh Republicans this long to jump on Toomey’s back. His vote against Trump occurred nearly a month ago, on Feb. 13.
Northampton County Republicans didn’t even wait to see how Toomey voted on impeachment. They censured him just for supporting having a trial.
The Monroe County GOP censured Toomey on Feb. 18. And the state committee took up the issue weeks ago. It opted to rebuke Toomey instead of censuring him.
There’s little difference between a rebuke and a censure. Both are just words. There are no penalties. If there’s a debate over which action to take, chances are the party already has decided that it won’t be backing that candidate in future campaigns anyway, unless it has no better options.
In Toomey’s case, the censure is especially meaningless.
He announced last year that he wouldn’t seek another term. So he doesn’t need to kiss up to the party any longer or need its help.
Those watching closely should not have been surprised with how Toomey voted on impeachment.
He never warmed greatly to Trump. In 2016, he announced that he would support Trump only an hour before the polls closed. Toomey was on that ballot, too, in a tight race against Katie McGinty. He clearly was concerned how his support of Trump would play with voters.
Toomey rarely was seen with Trump. He didn’t ride his coattails. He didn’t need to.
I suspect there are other Republican senators who were repulsed by Trump’s actions on the day of the Capitol riot, which is why he was impeached. Those senators just didn’t have the courage to vote their conscience at the trial because they didn’t want to risk ticking him off and losing their $174,000-a-year job.
Toomey had announced he wouldn’t be seeking another term, so he wasn’t held hostage like the others.
It’s time for the GOP to start looking ahead instead of looking back. It should learn from its mistakes, instead of making new ones.