Thursday, June 2, 2011

Toomey Stumps for State Committee Judicial Selections

In a mass email sent out the morning of the May 17 primary, Pat Toomey endorsed the GOP state committee's endorsement selections of Victor Stabile and Anne Covey, both of whom had no judicial experience since they had never been judges. A reprint of his email can be seen at the bottom of this post.

Paul Pannepinto, a judge, was the non-establishment Republican candidate for Commonwealth judge, PA's state appellate court judge seat. Pannepinto claimed that his experience as a judge was preferable to the on-the-job training that his non-judge opponent, Anne Covey, may well need to go through if she is elected in the fall, having already beaten Pannepinto in the primary. However, she did work as a clerk for an appellate court judge, but it seems Pannepinto had the edge in terms of overall judicial experience since all the cases an appellate court judge would see, would come from the local level of which Pannepinto has intimate knowledge.

Toomey's endorsement of Victor Stabile, a notorious donor to Arlen Specter, is confusing. Stabile even gave money to Specter as he ran against Toomey in the 2004 Republican primary.

Moreover, it is bizzarre that Toomey would be so quick to serve as a sticker for state committee-endorsed candidates, since he lost to Arlen Specter in 2004 in part because the state committee endorsed Specter over him that year. We must concede that Toomey did receive the state committee's endorsement over Peg Luksik in 2010.

We have no knowledge of any connections Toomey might have to the two. We became aware of a flyer sent out on the eve of the 2011 primary depicting Tom Corbett, Jim Cawley, and Toomey himself posing as idols so that the sheep voters would psychologically associate them with the endorsed judges. It seems that the PA GOP brand is much stronger than the individuals that run under it.

Given Toomey's yea vote on Patriot act extension and his willingness to stump for the state committee and a big Specter supporter proves that when it comes to playing ball with the establishment, Toomey is a real team player. Maybe he's doing what he needs to to stay in office :-(

Anyway, here is a reprint of Toomey's message.
Today, May 17th, is Primary Election Day in Pennsylvania. I hope that you’ll join me in supporting our terrific Republican Judicial Team: Vic Stabile for Pennsylvania Superior Court and Anne Covey for Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court.

We made tremendous strides in the 2010 Elections, but we cannot stop now. Pennsylvania deserves judges with knowledge and vision who will not legislate from the bench.

That is why I am asking that you vote for Vic Stabile for Pennsylvania Superior Court and Anne Covey for Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court when you cast your ballots today.

Thanks very much for your continued support,

Senator Pat Toomey

7 comments:

  1. Hi,

    I see my name recently popped up in an post entitled "Horowitz Revs Up Anti-Paulite Propaganda." Unfortunately, it appears to have been deleted, and Google doesn't have the cache up. I'd love to hear what you have to say about me, and address any concerns you may have about my analysis of Rep. Paul.

    Calvin

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  2. Calvin,

    I posted the blog and then withdrew the post, but Google had already indexed it and hadn't de-indexed it yet when you found it.

    I pulled my blog post because I didn't want to go in the direction of NewsReal blog or give it publicity--especially since further posts on it have been discontinued. My objective in debating you would be to convert you to liking RP, which I have determined would be very unlikely due to the uncharitable nature of your arguments. Although I remain resolutely opposed to NewsReal blog in general and to your sentiments on RP specifically, I have decided a debate would be a drain on me. I have withrawn the gesture but have not withdrawn the desire that moved me toward it. If you would like further explanation, please let me know and I'll email you --if I must...

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  3. I see. I too feel a debate would be futile, since out of the many, many Paul supporters I've interacted with, almost none have debated honestly or rationally.

    Since my above comment, I've managed to find the Google cache version of the post, and I noticed in it some egregious falsehoods and errors that, in my experience, are recurring tropes of Paulite commentary. You might want to watch out for these in the future:

    "The objective seems to be to give affirmation to the thoughtless skimmer who will take for granted the veracity of all the bloggers' slurs, quotes taken out of context, straw-men attacks, and outright calumnies [...] There's no charitable attempt to represent beyond caricature the Ron Paul's arguments whatsoever."

    Though I strongly criticize both Paul's ideas and character, I maintain that I have been fair and honest in my commentary on him. I took great pains to back up my Paul articles with solid evidence and rational, substantive arguments. You won't get much sympathy for your candidate if you insist on misrepresenting the work of critics who disagree with you. In the future, you'll have to demonstrate that alleged lies and caricatures actually ARE lies and caricatures.

    "If they can distract people from the nation's monetary and fiscal woes (and thus Ron Paul's platform) by concentrating on Mohammedans doing bad things, how bad Obama is, and the perils of multiculturalism, then they can orient readers' consciousness totally away from Ron Paul."

    This is one of the wild excesses that routinely undermines Paul supporters' credibility: the implication that because we think certain aspects of Paul's record disqualify him from serious consideration, we're somehow enemies of the rest of the ideas he stands for. It's asinine to suggest NewsRealBlog has been trying to "distract people from the nation's monetary and fiscal woes"; such a statement suggests very little familiarity with the rest of what the website routinely published.

    "In a recent article, Horowitz himself labels Paul as a 'Vicious Anti-Semite and Anti-American.' The disingenuous nature of the article in which he calls him this is fleshed out by the fact that Horowitz neglects to mention that Ron Paul's proposal to cut aid to Israel would also cut aid to several of Israel's rivals such as Egypt who all together receive more aid than Israel. Nor does Horowitz provide a charitable explanation of Ron Paul's belief that foreign aid "takes money from poor people in rich countries to give it to rich people in poor countries"--a belief that has many scholarly followers. Since Paul already believes foreign aid is wrong, cutting all of it would only be fair. But Horowitz doesn't engage in debate on any of these issues in his post."

    It's disingenuous to suggest that Paul's position on foreign aid is Horowitz's entire basis for considering Paul anti-Semitic. In the post you link, Horowitz cites anti-Semitic conduct of Paul's followers, and as you're familiar with my writing on the subject, I'm sure you could find several more substantive examples.

    "We put the moniker Conservative in parentheses because the NewsReal blog upholds Newt Gingrich who is not nor ever has been a conservative."

    I haven't the foggiest clue what you mean by "upholds." On several occasions our writers have favorably quoted him in particular instances when we've agreed with him about something, but all publications do that sort of thing all the time with many commentators. Only a fool would infer any sort of full-blown endorsement from that sort of thing. Indeed, I've written some highly critical commentary of him.

    Hopefully I've been helpful in pointing out a few things that might come in handy to a truth-seeker such as yourself.

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  4. Well Calvin, you're dragging me into an argument. I refuse to have a written debate with you because I can already see where it would go. A phone conversation would be good. we could get our points across more efficiently. Should I email you and then we could chat via phone? I can already see that any sort of debate with printed words would be useless and miserable--for me.

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  5. Actually Calvin, I think I will post that blog, since you seem to want to see it.

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  6. Oh also, please do not defend Horowitz since it is not your fault that he does what he does. Be a peace Calvin.

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  7. A phone chat would be every bit as useless as a written debate. At this point, I think the few rational people who will come across your attacks will leave unpersuaded, anyway.

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