ABC: Toomey the tea partier

As my colleague Dan Malloy notes, you can take Pat Toomey out of the Club For Growth, but you can't take the Club for Growth out of Toomey.

ABC-TV has a spot up today branding Toomey as a "Tea Party Senator" -- which is incorrect, but understandable. Toomey has embraced TP-type ideas, attended the TP caucus curtainraiser (giving a speech about the debt limit, but not officially pledging the percolating fraternity) and -- let's face it -- with his willingness to constantly go on TV and take headline-grabbing positions uncommon for a Senate freshman, does kind of seem like a politically-aggressive Tea Party type. (It's a lazy shorthand the national media has used before for the guy, who was a fiscally conservative congressman long before the Tea Party was a twinkle in Dick Armey's eye.)

Which brings us back to the ABC piece. It's about Toomey not committing to support fellow Republican Senator Olympia Snowe in her reelection bid next year -- a woman he repeatedly led ad campaigns against for her moderate positions (on health care and tax cuts) when he was president of the anti-tax Club.

Rather than support Snowe, he told ABC he'll stay neutral in her race:

"I'm not going to be opposing," Toomey said in an interview aboard the Capitol Subway. "I'm not going to be getting involved in a lot of races."

It's all the more interesting since Toomey got a big lift in 2009 when TP-fave Jim DeMint endorsed him over then-Republican Arlen Specter.

Link to ABC clip below:

Top: Animal House, 1978.