Toomsday Is Coming . . . Again!
Finally, some indisputably good news for Republicans: Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania tops either of the two Democrats challenging him for reelection, but falls short of the 50 percent threshold, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. In a rematch of their 2010 Senate race, Sen. Toomey leads former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak 47 - 39 percent, the independent Quinnipiac University Poll finds. Toomey bests Katie McGinty by a similar 47 - 38 percent margin. In the Toomey-Sestak matchup, independent voters are divided with 40 percent for the Republican and 39 percent for the Democrat. Toomey leads McGinty 41 – 34 percent among independent voters. Pennsylvania voters approve 50 – 29 percent of the job Toomey is doing and give him a 45 – 24 percent favorability rating. Something else nice? Toomey hasn't trailed a poll in his reelection bid yet. A Republican running for reelection statewide in a presidential year is always going to face a tough task, but it looks like Toomey -- lifetime ACU rating 94 out of 100 -- has come pretty close to the sweet spot for being a thoroughly conservative lawmaker representing a purple-at-best state. The Candidate of Infrastructure Spending Hasn't Spent on His Own Infrastructure If Donald Trump doesn't become the nominee, I wonder if his fans will conclude that the fault was not with the man, but with his campaign. Here's Roger Stone, a longtime friend and adviser to Trump but no longer with the campaign, painting a surprisingly grim picture of the road ahead: "The campaign has no infrastructure in the states," he continued. "The woman who ran Wisconsin for Trump previously ran Oklahoma for Trump. Trump lost. Prior to that, she had never run any political campaign, so there was no depth of experience. This is something I see again and again, particularly at the ground roots level. Now, I salute these people for their enthusiasm, but this is a science. This is not something we guess about. And now you move to a serious [sic] of states like Colorado, Wyoming, and Arizona [which] should be watched very carefully. And those become hand-to-hand combat at state conventions or state committee meetings, where once again the Trump people have built no infrastructure." As Allahpundit notes, if this sounds like someone saying "I told you so . . ." it's probably because it is. One way in which Trump's campaign is like others is that its advisers have jousted for primacy. Over the summer, Lewandowski became embroiled in a battle for control with Stone, Nunberg, and Cohen. The principal fault line was over Stone and Nunberg's belief that Trump needed to invest money into building a real campaign infrastructure and Lewandowski's contention that their current approach was working fine. Can Rick Scott Just Get His Latte, Or Is That Too Much to Ask? Florida governor Rick Scott went to a Starbucks in Gainesville, Florida, and a customer -- an activist and former local city commissioner -- shouted across the coffee shop to him, called him a bad word that starts with "a," and yelled at him for opposing Medicaid expansion. The incident is on video; apparently the woman made enough of a scene that Scott left before his order was ready. Obviously, the woman's outburst is completely protected under the First Amendment, and generally, we as Americans like the freedom to speak our minds to our elected officials. On the other hand, Scott's got a right to get coffee just like every other Starbucks customer, and there's got to be some better way to say, "I strongly disagree with your decisions" than "YOU'RE AN A******! YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT WORKING PEOPLE! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED TO SHOW YOUR FACE AROUND HERE!" At what point does berating your elected official start to interfere with his right to movement and use the coffee shop like anyone else? Are there any places the country would broadly accept this as unacceptable? On his way to the men's room? When he's with his family? 
(He's smiling, but deep down, you know he's thinking, "Just how long does it take to make a latte?") I should probably be a little circumspect here. I recall a tale of one of my relatives encountering Representative Peter King of New York at the dentist's office, while the congressman's mouth was full of dental instruments. At the time, King was expressing skepticism about the effort to impeach President Clinton, and my relative believed the president had obviously violated the law. I am told it is quite satisfying to give your congressman a piece of your mind while he's physically incapable of responding. ADDENDA: Observations about the old Soviet Union from NR contributor and former Time correspondent Michael Walsh . . . Walsh recalls the Soviet officials as "dysfunctional, lazy, and brutal just because they could be." In April 1986, the great concert pianist Vladimir Horowitz returned to the Soviet Union for his first recital since he left his homeland 61 years earlier. Someone -- likely the KGB or some other representative of Soviet authority -- cut the strings on the piano Horowitz was supposed to use for practice. In the Soviet Union, you drank beer in the morning because drinking the water was thoroughly unsafe. For foreigners living in Moscow, "The unit of currency was the Marlboro. Forget the taxis. You just held up a pack of Marlboros and ten cars would instantly stop and offer you a ride. It was Uber before there was Uber." If you did drive in Moscow, you didn't turn on the headlights at night in order to save the battery, you just used the running lights. "It seemed like the perfect metaphor for Communism, driving around at night with no lights on." Before leaving their cars, Russian drivers took their windshield wipers off and put them in the glove compartment; thieves would steal them because the rubber was valuable. . . . The first trailer for the next Star Wars movie, Rogue One, a separate, stand-alone spy/heist-style movie separate from last year's The Force Awakens, debuted this morning. 
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