Yesterday's news was that Tom Ridge said clearly and officially that he won't be running for the Senate in Pennsylvania in 2010, as earlier rumored.  The stories I've read about this since then have sounded mostly the same notes: this means Pat Toomey's the GOP candidate for sure.

That misses the most interesting part of the early Ridge rumors -- that Ridge was recruited by more moderate Republicans and urged to run.  Toomey, the Club for Growth sweetheart whose conservative politics scared Arlen Specter out of the primary, isn't the ideal GOP candidate in Pennsylvania (though strangely, he seems like exactly the guy they'd want to have in office now).  Polls from this week showed Ridge defeating Toomey statewide by nearly 40 percent in a Republican primary.  Even taking into account Ridge's past popularity and higher name recognition, that seems to show there actually is a hunger among Pennsylvania Republicans for someone who's closer to the center than Toomey.  They just don't want that guy to be Arlen Specter.

The question we should be asking now isn't whether Specter can beat Toomey in a general election, because he can.  Nearly any Democrat can.  The question we should be asking is whether the Republicans will let that race -- a race with Pat Toomey as the Big R candidate -- happen.  Orrin Hatch, co-chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has said he doesn't there is anybody in the world who believes he can get elected senator there."  He's also said the NRSC probably won't support Toomey, though he backed off that statement a little bit later.

In fact, the NRSC seems to be looking pretty seriously at Jim Gerlach, the 6th-district Republican House member who's been making some noises about entering the race.  Jon Cornyn, Hatch's co-chair, apparently spoke with Gerlach this week about getting into the race.  Gerlach isn't Ridge: he's won his races only narrowly the last three times and doesn't enjoy the statewide fondness that Ridge does (even if Ridge is now a resident of Maryland).  On the issues... it's hard to say whether he's a conservative masquerading as moderate or the other way around.  Gerlach voted against the president's budget and the stimulus (but so did every other House Republican), but for SCHIP expansion, against the federal act defining marriage as one man/one woman and for prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation, for embyonic stem cell research but against nearly everything else NARAL supports, and with a mixed record on environmental and energy issues.  His fundraising is run-of-the-mill Republican (with a few fun exceptions: he got $1,021 in 2008 from the Poker Players Alliance): $890,000 from business PAC sources in his 2008 campaign; $83,000 from labor PACs, most of whom had an interest in his seat on the Transportation and Infastructure Committee.

Is he a viable statewide candidate?  Not today.  But if the NRSC throws some money at him, in six months he could be -- and since the primary is still a year away, that should have Pat Toomey worried.  Gerlach is Specter-esque -- a waffling maybe-conservative -- without the high-profile defection of the Stimulus to make him distasteful to the party.  Those Republicans that want to see the party shift away from moderate views should be worried.