Pennsylvania unhappy with lurch to left

NY Post:

I'm running like I'm 20 points behind and I'll continue to run like I'm 20 points be hind," says Pat Toomey, the presumptive GOP nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania -- who in fact now leads Sen. Arlen Specter 45 percent to 31 percent among likely voters in the latest Frank & Marshall College poll.

Specter, who switched parties last year for fear of losing a Republican primary to Toomey, still has to finish off a challenger from the left, Rep. Joe Sestak, in the May 18 Democratic primary. Meanwhile, as the nation turns sour on the Obama agenda that Specter has helped enact, Toomey's been charging up -- six months ago, he was down eight points.

Campaigning across the state, Toomey says he's hearing time and again that it's Washington's "lurch to the left" that "Pennsylvanians don't like." The bailouts and ObamaCare are both flashpoints. The effort to pass the "card-check" bill to ease union organizing is a loser for Specter, too, even in this union-friendly state. Above all, Toomey reports, voters are asking the government, Why aren't you fo cused on the economy?

Much as with the Massachusetts voters who sent Scott Brown to the Senate, Pennsylvanians are unhappy with one-party rule. "People are looking for balance" and for some serious "fiscal discipline," Toomey notes.

And they're unhappy with President Obama. In February of last year, the F&M poll showed that 55 percent thought Obama was doing a good or excellent job, while 36 percent said he was doing a fair or poor job. In the latest poll, that job-approval rating had essentially reversed: 38 percent view him positively and 61 percent negatively.

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That is an extraordinary change in attitude in one year. It is another example of how Democrats arein trouble in teh 2010 Senate elections. Deficits, health care and terrorist rights are the driving factors in this election as they were in Massachusetts.