PA Senatorial Debate: Toomey's TEA versus Sestak’s sinking ship

Sestak & Toomey 10/20/2010

Wednesday night I watched live on C-Span my third key Senate debate this election cycle. Previously I watch debates featuring Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons, see “2010 Delaware Senate Debate: The “Witch” versus Harry’s “Pet””as well as Sharron Angle and Harry Reid see “Nevada debate: Sharron handed Harry his hat!”

At the Toomey-Sestak debate there was a game of ‘Who’s the Extremist.” Both candidates accused the other of being extreme. Joe Sestak made a point on several occasions of trying to link Pat Toomey to the Christine O’Donnells of the political world. He piggy-backed on the work of the lame-stream media who has set O’Donnell this election as their target to tear down, marginalize and figuratively dismember. For his part Toomey adeptly countered linking the Admiral’s lockstep adherence to the futile, failed Leftist policies of the President, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Joe Sestak, because of his close admiration for and association with the current Democratic agenda, proved to be the most extreme of the two candidates.

The contrast between the two candidates was as wide as an ocean. Here are three key issues that highlight the differences between the two candidates.

CAPTIALISM VERSUS SOCIALISM

Pat Toomey stood for free enterprise. Sestak stood for big government control over Wall Street. He wants to cap Wall Street, while Toomey wants to create an environment allowing entrepreneurs to fly, to develop jobs and opportunities. That is what has built America. Sestak wants to tax and limit capitalism and free enterprise. He favors nationalizing of industry.

EDUCATION

Pat Toomey is for giving parents choice in how they education. He is against pouring good money after bad into a failed system. He cited the National Education Association (NEA) as being self serving and not serving students. Sestak was for pouring more money into the failed system. He said he was for charter schools, but did not comment on allowing the money to follow the child as did Toomey. Sestak was exposed is a pawn of the teacher unions. Toomey is a champion for parental rights and choice. Toomey condemned Sestak for squelching the Washington, D.C. voucher program.

ABORTION

The one area I disagreed with Toomey was on the fact that he stated that he was partially Pro-Life. He said he was Pro-Life except in the case of rape, incest, and the life to the mother. Why punish the innocent baby, in the case of rape or incest, when it was the perpetrator who caused the conception? Sestak’s position is blatantly and incomparably worse. He supports abortion funding, embryonic stem cell research and the unconstitutional health care ‘reform’ act which creates essentially what will amount to death panels. Sestak denies a parents right to choose where to educate their child, but denies the child the right to live giving the woman the absolute right to determine whether a fellow human being, her boy or her girl, lives or dies.

I cannot give a full or unqualified endorsement to Pat Toomey based on his less than 100% Pro-Life position. After all, Life is the fundamental right of all human beings regardless of what stage of physical development that they or in or what some fallible earthly judge may declare to the contrary.

Peg Luksik for U.S. Senate

While I endorse Mrs. Luksik for the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania and I admire her decision not to have an abortion despite the possibility that she would die as a result of the pregnancy, take the following article (Luksik: Toomey is no pro-lifer) with a grain of salt. Pat Toomey actually did vote against allowing funding for overseas military abortions here and here and for a bill disallowing funding for abortions by foreign organizations here. (But that last one is suspicious since mostly liberal democrats voted for it and conservative republicans voted against it. Maybe it was a substitute for something that would have been better.) He did, however, vote against an amendment to a bill which stated:

An amendment to prohibit any funds to be used by the FDA for the testing, development, or approval (including approval of production, manufacturing, or distribution) of any drug for the chemical inducement of abortion.

Toomey also voted against DHHS appropriations bills which had abortion and Planned Parenthood funding in them. (Actually very unusual for a Republican!) As for the 1998 comment, I can't confirm it. And a link is provided (politico.com) for the statement about confirming Sotomayor.

Another big issue which Luksik isn't talking about is that Toomey voted for the authorization to use military force in Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands including some children, which is not exactly a pro-life decision. Luksik sounds more non-interventionalist, but does not come right out and say that she would have voted against the war.

Luksik: Toomey is no pro-lifer

http://www.pa2010.com/2010/04/luksik-toomey-is-no-pro-lifer

Republican Peg Luksik this week called into question Pat Toomey’s pro-life credentials, taking perhaps her most direct swipe yet at the party’s front-running Senate candidate.

Luksik’s campaign seized on a voter guide issued by the anti-abortion group LifePAC of SouthWestern Pennsylvania, which included Toomey on its list of candidates who oppose abortion rights. Though Toomey has for several years now described himself as staunchly pro-life, he had a more libertarian-style, pro-choice image in the late 1990s. When seeking the party’s nomination for Congress in 1998, he told The Morning Call that while he was personally opposed to abortion, he also didn’t like to see government take that individual choice off the table.

“Abortions should be legal in all circumstances as long as the procedure is completed within the first trimester of pregnancy,” he told the newspaper in a 1998 questionnaire.

By the time he was gearing up to challenge Senator Arlen Specter in the 2004 Republican primary, he had established a position more staunchly opposed to abortion. With the political focus this cycle largely on economic issues and the state’s conservative movement lined up firmly behind him, Toomey has rarely had to confront questions on social issues. But Luksik, a conservative activist who has struggled mightily to cut into Toomey’s considerable support as the presumptive GOP nominee, saw the LifePAC voter guide as a chance to bring the issue back to the surface.

In a letter to the organization’s president, shared with reporters on Monday, she expressed her disappointment. She noted that Toomey said he would have voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, and recalled Toomey’s votes in congress to loosen a ban on federal funding for abortions overseas and against abstinence-only education.

“My history on the issue of the sanctity of life is unquestionable, while my opponent’s history should certainly be cause for concern,” Luksik wrote. “You are preparing to distribute tens of thousands of voter guides to your membership that give the illusion that there are two pro-life Republicans running for United States Senate. In fact, there is only one, and it is me.”

Toomey’s campaign declined to comment.

April 28, 2010 at 7:00 am