Toomey leads Sestak 45% to 38% in Pennsylvania Senate race

Congressman Joe Sestak’s post-primary bounce appears to over, and he now trails Republican rival Pat Toomey by seven points in the U.S. Senate contest in Pennsylvania.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Pennsylvania shows Toomey with 45% support, while Sestak earns 38%. Five percent (5%) prefer another candidate in the race, and 12% are undecided.

Two weeks ago, just after his widely covered primary victory over longtime Senator Arlen Specter, Sestak posted a modest four-point lead lead over Toomey.

Prior to the primary, however, Toomey tended to enjoy modest leads over Sestak.

The current polling shows that 19% of Democratic voters are undecided or prefer some other candidate. Only 7% of Republicans fall into this category. That suggests Sestak has some work remaining to unify his party following the primary battle.

American Spectator blogger predicts Obama will resign

By Peter Ferrara on 6.2.10

Months ago, I predicted in this column that President Obama would so discredit himself in office that he wouldn't even be on the ballot in 2012, let alone have a prayer of being reelected. Like President Johnson in 1968, who had won a much bigger victory four years previously than Obama did in 2008, President Obama will be so politically defunct by 2012 that he won't even try to run for reelection.

I am now ready to predict that President Obama will not even make it that far. I predict that he will resign in discredited disgrace before the fall of 2012. Like my previous prediction, that is based not just on where we are now, but where we are going under his misleadership.

Is the President Above the Law?

Watergate was supposed to have established that Presidents are not above the law. If that is so, President Obama may have to resign for breaking the law in the Sestak affair.

Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) is now the Democrat nominee for the Senate seat held far too long by Arlen Specter. President Obama induced Specter to switch parties and give the Democrats their very temporary, 60 vote, filibuster-proof majority, in return for endorsing him for reelection and promising him no opposition in the Democrat primary. But Sestak had already announced that he was running for the seat, and he refused to get out. Two week ago, Sestak defeated the unprincipled, opportunistic Specter for the Democrat nomination, continuing the perfect string of everyone who Obama endorses and campaigns for going down to defeat.

For months now, Sestak has publicly claimed that President Obama tried to keep his promise to Specter by offering him a high-ranking administration appointment if he would get out of the race. The rumor is that Sestak, formerly an Admiral, was offered appointment as Secretary of the Navy. The problem is that a federal statute explicitly provides that it is a federal felony, punishable by up to one year in prison, to attempt to bribe a candidate with a federal job, or anything of value, to influence an election.span>

As Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has indicated, the White House is now engaged in a coverup that is only making matters worse.

Why would Sestak abandon Senate pursuit for "a trifle?"

Is there a political errand that requires skirting the law and resorting to lawyerly evasion should it come to light? William Jefferson Clinton, reporting for duty, sir!
With the addition of Bill Clinton to a mix that included a Friday news dump and an exquisitely crafted exculpatory document from the White House counsel's office, the Joe Sestak job-offer scandal acquired a retro feel. Who knew "hope and change" would feel so 1998?

The Sestak affair boiled over during the last week. The Democratic congressman said months ago that the White House had attempted to keep him out of the Senate primary in Pennsylvania against party-switcher Arlen Specter by dangling a job offer. No one paid much attention until Sestak won, and when pressed on the Sunday shows, refused to say anything more about the matter in a Tony-worthy impression of "A Man with Something to Hide."

The White House kept insisting "trust us, nothing untoward happened," until even Democrats began to say they should be more forthcoming. That produced Friday's revelation of Clinton's involvement as an emissary to Sestak, and a 11/4-page long White House counsel "report" that sought to put the matter to rest in a matter of a mere seven paragraphs.

The document suggests that, at the behest of the White House, Clinton offered Sestak an unpaid position on a presidential advisory board to get him to stand down.

He might have had better luck if he'd offered him a choice Capitol Hill parking space. For a sitting congressman and former three-star admiral like Sestak, a spot on an advisory commission would be a nuisance to be avoided rather than a plum to be coveted, let alone at the price of his senatorial ambitions.

It's almost inconceivable that practiced political hands like Clinton and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff behind the gambit, would have considered such a trifle sufficient enticement to sway Sestak. Besides, the advisory role doesn't jibe with Sestak's words or body language over the last three months, all of which suggested he'd been offered a real, honest-to-goodness job - you know, one with a salary and maybe even health benefits and an office.

Judicial Watch: Either Sestak lied or official committed a felony

Rep. Sestak’s allegations are extremely serious and yet we’ve heard nothing from the Obama White House so far but vague denials of wrongdoing and outright stonewalling.

It’s time for everyone involved in this scandal to come clean. There is simply no wiggle room. Either Sestak lied about the federal job offer or someone at the White House likely committed a felony. It’s that simple.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to appoint a special counsel in the matter is a disgrace and will not stand.

This latest bribery allegation reflects a disturbing pattern by the Obama White House. We still don’t have all the details about involvement of Obama administration officials in the sale of Obama’s former Illinois U.S. Senate seat by Rod Blagojevich. And we still don’t have answers about the charge that Obama Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina offered a federal job to Colorado Democratic Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff to keep him out of the Senate race. There is also the report that President Obama tried to push disgruntled White House Counsel Greg Craig out of the White House by offering a federal judgeship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. And now we have Joe Sestak.

The Chicago Machine has truly come to Washington.

The candidates "that nobody sent" won last Tuesday

The biggest loser in this week's tumultuous primary elections wasn't Arlen Specter or President Obama or even Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. It was the clubhouse.

In each of the marquee Senate races, the party establishment took it on the chin. Specter, the Republican-turned-Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, had support from every star in the Democratic firmament but was eclipsed by two-term Rep. Joe Sestak. In Kentucky, Rand Paul, a tea party-caffeinated novice with impassioned and occasionally eccentric views, obliterated Trey Grayson, the choice of McConnell and the state GOP leadership. In Arkansas, Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln was forced into a precarious runoff by Lt. Gov. Bill Halter despite backing from both Obama and former President Clinton.

The ethos of the clubhouse era was captured in the story of Illinois Democrat Abner Mikva, who -- decades before becoming a House member and then a federal judge -- walked into his Chicago Democratic ward office in 1948 as an earnest law student hoping to volunteer. As Mikva later recounted, a glaring ward committee member brusquely asked him, " 'Who sent you?' I said, 'Nobody sent me.' He put [his] cigar back in his mouth and he said, 'We don't want nobody that nobody sent.' "

This week's elections were the triumph of the candidates that nobody sent.

Holder won't pursue New Black Panther Party, etc.

In the age of Attorney General Eric Holder - who not only won't pursue the case against the New Black Panther Party, who won't investigate the allegations that Joe Sestak was illegally offered inducements by the Obama administration to drop his primary challenge against Arlen Specter, who won't investigate similar offers made by the Obama team to former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff to drop his primary challenge to Senator Michael Bennett, who won't investigate ACORN on possible racketeering charges, who has a blase approach towards terrorism and who cannot even utter the words "Islamic terrorism" - should we be surprised that John Morton, who heads U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, proudly declare he won't process illegal immigrants referred to them by Arizona state officials?

This team is looking at the November elections and realize their refusal to enforce federal laws can reap political payoffs.

Some Democrats win by treating Obama agenda as toxic

Some Democrats on the campaign trail have hit upon a winning campaign tactic: Run against President Obama and his agenda -- especially the health care overhaul.

Democrat Mark Critz railed against the Obama administration's health care reforms while campaigning in his western Pennsylvania district -- and was easily elected to the House.

In West Virginia, Democratic stalwart Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, who voted against an administration-backed energy bill last year, was defeated in his primary after his challenger accused him of not having enough disdain for the measure that was wildly unpopular in his home district. He also was hammered for supporting health care reform.

Rep. Joe Sestak, in Pennsylvania's Democratic Senate primary, challenged the White-House-endorsed five-term incumbent, Sen. Arlen Specter, and was rewarded with a cushy eight percentage-point win.

While other factors and issues played key roles in Democratic primaries and special elections this year, shunning -- or even rebuking -- the White House so far has helped Democrats.

Toomey vs. Sestak in PA will be referendum on Obama's agenda

The Associated Press has just called the Pennsylvania Senate primary for Joe Sestak, putting an end to Sen. Arlen Specter's political career. It's good to see that Specter's craven political maneuverings have finally caught up with him. Sestak will likely present a more difficult challenge for Republican Pat Toomey in the general election (by significantly weakening the anti-incumbent argument), but it will be refreshing to watch a race that will present a clear ideological contrast. If Toomey wins the race, it will be very hard to portray it as anything other than a rejection of Obama's agenda in a state that has trended Democrat in recent election cycles.

Sestak beats Specter in PA,; Paul beats Grayson in KY

Upstart Senate candidates claimed two stunning victories in primary elections Tuesday night as Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak denied incumbent Democrat Arlen Specter renomination to a sixth term and Kentucky insurgent Rand Paul easily bested establishment favorite Trey Grayson for the Republican Party's Senate nod.

In the evening's third key Senate race, Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln clung to a slim lead of a few thousand votes over Lt. Gov. Bill Halter with nearly 85 percent of the vote counted in the state's Democratic primary, but will face an expensive and potentially dangerous June 8 runoff since neither candidate will reach 50 percent of the vote.

Insurgents didn't completely rule the night, however. Democrat Mark Critz, a former Hill aide, defeated Republican Tim Burns in the special election for the Pennsylvania congressional seat of the late Rep. John Murtha. Both parties invested millions in the race — viewed as a bellwether election for the fall campaign.

Specter-Sestak primary in Pennsylvania a dead heat

Pennsylvania’s Democratic Primary is a month away, and the race between incumbent Senator Arlen Specter and challenger Joe Sestak is now a dead heat.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely primary voters in the state finds Specter with 44% of the vote, his lowest level of support in 10 months of surveying. Sestak, a congressman from the Philadelphia suburbs, earns 42% support this month, a level he’s hit several times but never exceeded.

Four percent (4%) of likely Democratic primary voters prefer some other candidate in the race, and 10% are undecided.

A month ago, Specter had a 48% to 37% lead in the contest. But Specter has been losing ground since January.