LEHIGH VALLEY MORNING CALL: …Pat Toomey bucked conservatives, the tea party and even his former employer, the anti-tax Club for Growth — all of whom helped him win a U.S. Senate seat — when he voted for the last-minute fiscal cliff deal in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
That’s triggered disappointment, even anger among his backers, but it doesn’t seem to have severed any ties. It has, however, raised speculation about Toomey facing a career crossroads within Congress…
“The fact is this is very unusual circumstances to have a law that gives the president what he really wants, which was a tax increase,” Toomey said. “Now we could have said, ‘Fine, we’re just going to let taxes go up on all Americans.’ I thought that was a bad idea. I don’t think you can solve this problem with tax increases. So what we did was we spared as many Americans as we possibly could from a tax increase, and we never had any leverage on spending cuts.” [Toomey] … (more)
