Post Gazette: Mr. Specter disputed the suggestion that Pennsylvania's GOP voters, who nearly deprived him of renomination in the 2004 primary, had become dominated by the party's more conservative wing.
"The Republican Party in Pennsylvania is still more the party of [the late Sen.] John Heinz than it is the party of the right wing,'' he said. "We've got a pretty long tradition of [former Gov.] Bill Scranton and [the late former Sen.] Hugh Scott, [former Gov. and Attorney Gen. Dick] Thornburgh and Heinz and [former Sen.] Dick Schweiker, myself and so on. I think our party has not pulled hard to the right. The difficulty of a primary is that so few people vote.''
Perhaps tellingly, however, with the exception of himself, none of the figures he cited as examples of the Republican mainstream has posted a victory since Mr. Heinz' last re-election in 1988.
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