This gives me two immediate thoughts: First, if Pat Toomey were going to be a standard Republican who works across the aisle to forge compromises with Democrats anyway, then why did conservatives expend so much energy trying to elect him (and oust another Republican senator with more experience)?

Granted, you may say that Toomey has to move to the center in order to win re-election in 2016. But one could also have used that excuse to forgive Specter’s penchant for bipartisan compromise.

The second thing this highlights is that all the worry about those “crazy” and extreme conservative tea party candidates elected to the U.S. senate in 2010 was overwrought.