They are a study in contrasts, like two clashing characters in a sitcom – the odd couple, let’s call them.
But as the results of last November’s election came pouring in, these two men – one a traditional free-market, fiscal conservative; the other a brash and disruptive populist figure – came to represent the lines by which the Republican party will unfurl itself in the coming years.
First things first: the respective victories of U.S. Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and President-elect Donald Trump seemed like a long shot. As Jon Lerner of the National Review outlines in a recent op-ed, Toomey managed to come out on top despite having more money spent against him than any Senate candidate in U.S. history, and his unlikely win helped secure a Republican majority in the Senate for at least another two years. Trump, meanwhile, somehow managed to win in a state where Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney all failed – a “remarkable” feat, according to Lerner.
Still, both races were close, and Lerner admits it can be easy to write-off these wins as a simple result of voters favoring Republicans this time around.
“That conclusion would be wrong,” Lerner writes. “Trump and Toomey took distinctly different paths to victory and never appeared together in the state. The differences between their paths present significant implications for the future of the Republican party in an increasingly polarized nation.”
Lerner’s conclusion, from looking at various demographics and individual counties across the state, is that the best path toward success for the Republican Party is to combine the tactics of Trump and Toomey into one solidified push.
Look at it this way: Toomey’s success in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbs bolstered his victory. Trump overcame a poor showing in those same suburbs by faring better in the rural areas than any Republican presidential candidate since 1988.
“But what would happen if, rather than choosing between the two paths, you merged them?” Lerner posits.
If that happened – if Republicans managed to secure the suburbs through fiscally-conservative principles, while also utilizing a populist and anti-establishment message like that which Trump pushed – neither of these two races would have ended as nail-biters.
Instead, Lerner writes, they would have been landslides.
“This election showed that it’s possible for Republicans to narrowly win tough states like Pennsylvania with either the Toomey approach or the Trump approach,” Lerner concludes. “If the party can determine how to combine the two methods, then Pennsylvania and several other states could become reliably red.”
Head over to the National Review for Lerner’s original op-ed.
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