Senator Pat Toomey is saying that some of his colleagues were led to oppose the Manchin/Toomey background checks bill for reasons that had less to do with the merits of the bill than what can only be called political spite:
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) revealed that some members of his party opposed expanding background checks for gun sales recently because they didn’t want to “be seen helping the president.”
Two weeks ago, only three Republican senators voted for the bipartisan background checks amendment sponsored by Toomey and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), despite overwhelming popular support for such a measure.
“In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it,” Toomey admitted on Tuesday in an interview with Digital First Media editors in the offices of the Times Herald newspaper in Norristown, Pa.
The Times Herald noted that in “subsequent comments,” Toomey “tried to walk that remark part-way back by noting he meant to say Republicans across the nation in general, not just those in the Senate.”
In the end, I’m not sure it matters if Toomey was referring to his Senate colleagues or Republicans as a whole. He’s simply stating a truth about the Republican Party that has existed since January 2009.
