Pa. Republicans’ ‘Summer of Toomey’ gives way to a political spring for gubernatorial and Senate hopefuls

“I’m skeptical of the idea that if Biden were to prevail that somehow that would trigger a reimagining of the Republican Party in the aftermath,” said Brock McCleary, a Harrisburg-based pollster whose political practice specializes in working for GOP campaigns and candidates.

“Will people push that idea out of political opportunism? Of course they will,” he continued. “But whether there’s going to be an uprising among the grassroots that’s like: ‘I’ve gotta find a candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania that’s different from Trump. I want a whole different direction.’ Man, the guy making that bet? I wouldn’t quit my day job.”

If Trump doesn’t win, McCleary’s soundings tell him, most Republican will ascribe that defeat to the intensity of the opposition Trump faced from day one from Democrats in Congress, and what they viewed as an extraordinary level of scrutiny from the press.

“You’re going to find few Republican voters who will feel that it was because of some underlying structural problem with the Republican Party in the Trump Era,” the pollster said.

Pa. Republicans’ ‘Summer of Toomey’ gives way to a political spring for gubernatorial and Senate hopefuls

by Charles Thompson |PennLive | October 5, 2020