Insurgent Republicans

The Club for Growth wants to create a free market GOP, whether the party likes it or not.

David Weigel from the December 2006 issue

div class="bodytext"> p> This is not span class="dropcap">where Pat Toomey wanted to be tonight. The 43-year-old Pennsylvanian took over the Club for Growth in September 2006, after he lost a nail-biting primary to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and vacated his own seat in Congress. Against the objections of powerful Republicans, Toomey helped nudge Stephen Laffey, the conservative mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, into a primary fight against Lincoln Chafee, the state’s liberal Republican senator. Throughout the summer, polls showed Laffey positioned to do what Toomey couldn’t: oust a pro-choice, pro-tax RINO (“Republican in Name Only”) and send the GOP establishment reeling. o:p> /o:p> /span> /p> p>But the plan isn’t coming together. As Toomey quietly eats a late dinner in a D.C. hotel, Andrew Roth, the Club for Growth’s government affairs director, feverishly refreshes the website collecting vote results. The first numbers come in, and Laffey is down 56 percent to 44 percent. o:p> /o:p>