Neglected in the discussion of Pat Toomey’s primary challenge against Arlen Specter is the likely strength of the Democratic competition in the general election. As Jim Antle correctly notes, a successful Pennsylvania Republican primary challenge would have different effects from Ned Lamont’s challenge to Joe Lieberman, and more to the point Lamont would have prevailed in a head-to-head contest with the GOP nominee. There is no way for Specter to imitate Lieberman because Pennsylvania law requires Specter announce an independent candidacy before the Republican primary. Specter cannot pursue his party’s nomination, lose and then continue to campaign. Unlike Connecticut Republicans, Pennsylvania’s Democrats are very strong and have a deep bench. Either Republican emerging from a bruising primary fight would be vulnerable, and the challenger would be more so. Regardless of who had come out of the Democratic primary with a win in Connecticut, the Democrats were sure to hold the seat because of Republican weakness. It is by no means certain that the GOP can hold Pennsylvania even if Specter did not have to face down a challenge. As things stand now, he will have to head off Toomey’s challenge, which makes his later re-election even less likely.

One of the House members who may pursue the Democratic nomination, Rep. Joe Sestak, a retired rear admiral who ran on an antiwar platform in ’06, is a great example of new Democratic strength in the eastern Pennsylvania suburbs. Sestak is a formidable opponent, and he would make it very tough for Specter to win re-election. My guess is that he would eat Toomey alive and cause the Republicans to suffer another super-landslide humiliation. Contrary to Frum’s reading of the Pennsylvania landscape, Toomey’s pro-life views are not anything like his main liability. Had pro-life views been one of the main problems for Republican candidates in Pennsylvania, the Democrats would not have recruited and chosen Casey in ’06. A party does not try to co-opt a position that undermines its opponents. It is probably more correct that Toomey’s Club for Growth economic policy views are a serious weakness, and a Toomey candidacy in 2010 that pushes a CfG agenda is probably about as well-timed and appropriate for Pennsylvania as a Santorum candidacy in 2006 that was preoccupied with hawkish foreign policy lectures and calls for greater bellicosity at a time when the public was turning sharply against the war. Entirely missing from Frum’s analysis is the significant advantage opponents of the Iraq war continue to have over supporters in increasingly “blue” states such as Pennsylvania, and this is not something that the Republicans can fix in this cycle, as both of their leading contenders for this nomination are pro-war.

On a side note, it is amusing that Frum entitled his post “Lessons Unlearned,” since one of the lessons Frum has consistently refused to learn over the years is that the war was politically toxic for anyone who continued to support it. Lieberman’s primary defeat and the collapse of Republican electoral viability in Pennsylvania are just a couple of examples that show this to be true.