Recently, a new poll of Pennsylvania likely voters was released, which measured statewide elected politicians, including their senior U.S. Senator John Fetterman (D).
Among those who identified themselves as Republicans, 79% have a favorable opinion of Fetterman, while 17% have an unfavorable view. Among his fellow Republicans, 66% have a favorable opinion of McCormick, while 10% have an unfavorable view. Both senators' approval ratings are underwater among likely voters who identify as Democrats.
This prompted the article’s headline, “Fetterman holds a higher approval rating among Republicans than McCormick.”
This is rather amazing. I am a native Pennsylvanian and worked on three Senate campaigns – Rick Santorum’s successful reelection in 2000, and Arlen Specter’s successful reelections in the primary and general in 2004. And I have never heard of a Pennsylvania Democrat senator being more popular with Republican voters than his state’s Republican colleague.
Which leads to the big question - is John Fetterman going to switch parties to run for reelection in 2028?
Before I answer, however, I should state my own view of the man. In 2022, as a consistent conservative Republican, I voted against him. His then-reputation was as a typical Bernie Bro Democrat, who would be a reliable vote for the Democrat agenda.
It turns out this was wrong. Fetterman has distinguished himself as a principled, old-school Democrat who represents those sane Democrats who dominated their party until the '70s and were still major players until the end of the Clinton administration.
The key here was that as a sane Democrat, John Fetterman believes that the U.S. is a good – if not perfect – country. For that reason, he does not root against the U.S. during a war against a jihadist Islamist nation like Iran. He understands the necessity of having border controls to make sure that terrorists, criminals, and psychopaths can’t just waltz through the borders (just to get his party a temporary edge in electoral politics). He doesn’t think that President Donald Trump is the devil, and that Democrats should obstruct literally anything the president does. And he understands that the tiny, democratic, and allied Jewish state of Israel is not a U.S. sponsored, evil, “settler-colonial” project.
Unfortunately, most of today’s Democrats, brainwashed by their leftist college professors and/or teachers, no longer believe in these things. And they have been stirred into a frenzy of hate towards their own Pennsylvania senator, for his heresies. Which is why Fetterman is underwater.
But back to the central question.
My educated guess is that Sen. Fetterman will not make the switch to the GOP. Because it likely won’t work. There is historical precedent, as Arlen Specter unsuccessfully tried to switch political parties as a U.S. senator. Specter had first been a Democrat during the '50s. However, he later went on to be elected statewide five times as a Republican, where he was considered one of the more “moderate” or even “liberal” Senate Republicans, like current Maine Senator Susan Collins (with whom he served).
In 2004, however, conservative Republican congressman Pat Toomey challenged Specter in the primary. Toomey came up short, narrowly, and then Specter easily won the general.
Heading into 2010, Specter seemed likely to dodge any interparty challenge, as the Democrats/CW had done a good job of convincing people that the GOP was “doomed in 2010”. But then, snatching defeat from the hands of victory, Specter listened to his great “friend”, then-Vice President Joe Biden, the dumbest man in U.S. politics, who convinced him that the Obama stimulus package, the usual corrupt grab bag of Democrat funding projects for their constituencies, was necessary to prevent a depression, and that if Specter voted for it, President Obama and the Democrats would help protect him.
Specter voted for the stimulus package, and Toomey jumped back into the Senate race. The Specter campaign’s polling showed Toomey far ahead. So, Specter did the only thing he could to stay in office and joined the Democrat Party.
President Obama promptly endorsed Specter for Senate. As did other important Democrat officials, including Biden and then-Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. But Democrat Rep. Joe Sestak (PA-07), an ambitious two-term congressman from the Philadelphia suburban counties, was undeterred. Obama promised Sestak a prominent administration position to drop out of the race, but Sestak refused.
In 2010, Sestak beat Specter in the Democrat primary. This is because Pennsylvania is a strong party state. Only party members are allowed to vote in the primaries, and the people who vote in the primaries are the most committed partisans and the most ideological. So, the Democrat voters, who were far to the left and had been voting against Specter for 30 years, voted against him again.
Nothing has changed in Pennsylvania since this campaign.
Fetterman is a left-leaning senator. The Heritage Foundation has his conservative lifetime voting score at just four percent. He has voted for legislation that would grant de facto amnesty to every DACA recipient, to reduce funding for ICE, and against the One Big Beautiful Bill. So, despite his willingness to act correctly on certain big issues, he is totally out of step with GOP voters.
Pennsylvania Republicans also have a large bench of potential Senate candidates. Several of the congressmen might be willing to run for that office. Sean Parnell, who once ran and has since joined the Pentagon, could run. There are also several minor statewide officials.
Pennsylvania Republicans still have a closed primary. Meaning that the most committed and conservative Republicans will be the ones voting, and they are not necessarily responsive to Republican leadership. In 2022, despite the almost united objections of the state party leadership, the primary voters strongly supported social conservative Doug Mastriano, a political dud of a candidate who was making no effort to run a modern campaign.
Therefore, if Fetterman switches parties, and even if President Trump endorses him, the Pennsylvania precedent shows that he is unlikely to win the GOP nomination. And this is not even considering Fetterman’s health issue – he suffered a massive stroke in 2022, which makes it hard for him to speak and understand people.
To sum up, I don’t think John Fetterman will ever get elected as a Republican senator from Pennsylvania.