Tom Corbett Went From Establishment Republican to Tea Party Allly. Bad Move.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett's popularity, or lack thereof, has just hit a new low. A Public Policy Polling survey released Tuesday found his approval rating has slid to 24 percent, making him the least popular governor of the 43 states PPP has polled recently. Nearly two-thirds of Pennsylvanians disapprove of Corbett, including 51 percent of his Republican peers. If next November’s election were held today, Corbett would lose by double-digit margins to a wide array of Democratic challengers.
The poll is no outlier. Survey after survey finds that Corbett—who cruised into office two years ago as a conservative, corruption-busting prosecutor—is widely reviled in a state that, so far, has never failed to re-elect an incumbent governor.
But why? How has a mild-mannered governor like Corbett so enraged Pennsylvania’s typically placid electorate? Corbett’s own failings—from his reclusive nature to his bumbling legislative strategy—are mainly to blame. But it is also clear that Pennsylvanians, a largely moderate lot that have voted Democrat in the last six presidential elections, have little taste for truly conservative governance. In a purple state that has been steadily swinging left in recent years, Corbett looks increasingly anachronistic.
By temperament, Corbett is an establishment Republican, not a Tea Partier. But there isn’t much daylight between Corbett’s policies and those of the party’s right wing. He signed Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge, is fighting gay marriage in the courts, has aligned himself with the state’s growing fracking industry, and has decimated education funding. Recently, it is the school cuts that are most hurting Corbett in the polls. Three years ago, a Franklin and Marshall poll found that only four percent of Pennsylvanians considered education the state’s most pressing problem. In September, education was the top priority in the survey, with 21 percent.
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http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115767/tom-corbett-poll-approval-rating-pennsylvania-governor-plummets