Pat Toomey

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Lehigh Valley, arrives with other Republican senators at the North Portico of the White House in Washington, Friday, Oct. 11, 2013, to meet with President Barack Obama regarding the government shutdown and debt ceiling. After weeks of ultimatums, President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans are exploring whether they can end a budget standoff that has triggered a partial government shutdown and edged Washington to the verge of a historic, economy-jarring federal default.

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Six months ago, U.S. Sen Pat Toomey showed his pluck by reaching across the ideological aisle and co-sponsoring legislation to improve federal gun control laws.

Wednesday, with nothing really to gain and everything to lose, he showed his pragmatism by voting against the deal to end the 16-day shutdown of the federal government.

The Lehigh Valley Republican would have known that in a Democrat-controlled Senate, his vote was never going to affect the outcome of an 11th hour deal brokered by bipartisan leadership in both chambers of Congress.

And having seen how his gun control experiment was pilloried by his conservative base in April, Toomey dared not madden them again in such a short span of time.

“What caused me in the end to vote 'no' was that in addition to opening the government, which I supported, there was a provision to add hundreds of billions of dollars of debt to our government, and not to have any sliver of reform to spending that causes a need for this reform,” Toomey said in an exclusive interview with The Patriot-News Thursday.

Though he disagrees, given the circumstances it was probably the only practical vote Toomey could cast.

“What he's trying to do is preserve his standing within the conservative wing of his party,” said Muhlenberg College pollster Chris Borick. “He saw a little bit of the luster of his golden boy status among the right be tarnished through some of his more moderate moves, and therefore it seems that he doesn't want to further agitate members of the base.”

Predictably, Pennsylvania Democrats, angling to oust Toomey in the 2016 presidential election cycle, lambasted him as “Tea Party Pat Toomey,” and hastily created a vote-monitoring website called “The Truth About Toomey.”

The choice was easier for the five suburban Philadelphia GOP House members who broke ranks from their party early into the shutdown by saying they'd vote to end it.

Although they were quickly branded RINOs – Republicans In Name Only – by tea party activists in the state, their votes were just as pragmatic as Toomey's. Republican voters in their districts are more markedly moderate than their party bretheren in rural ranges of the commonwealth.

Had Toomey voted with them he would have again singled himself out to a grassroots tea party base rooted in rural Pennsylvania irked by his gun control initiatives.

Instead, he sided with senators, GOP presidential hopefuls, and tea party darlings Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio, who all vote to filibuster Wednesday's shutdown accord.

In political terms, Toomey's vote was cast to stave off the very same type of primary challenge from the right that he himself foisted upon long-serving, iconic Republican U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, who died a year and three days ago.

Toomey rode the nationwide 2010 tea party revolt to victory by driving Specter out of the GOP and into a losing effort in the Democratic primary.

And having been the harbinger of Specter's political demise, Toomey will well know that an elected official – particularly a conservative one in a state with a million more registered Democrats than Republicans – must first satiate his base before turning his attention to an always difficult general election.

“That's a smart strategy if what you have to worry about is the primary,” said Temple University political parties expert Robin Kolodny. “But I'm not so sure that the general public will be enamored with his efforts to stay true to the tea party.”

Fueled by a near religious opposition to President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, fiscal conservatives on the right pushed for the shutdown in a wild gambit to delay or defund the historic healthcare law.

“As much as I would love to defund Obamacare, it never occurred to me the president was going to sign a bill that defunds what he considers his main legislative achievement,” Toomey said. “So it was an unattainable goal.”

That failed strategy also cost the economy an estimated $24 billion in the process.

But instead of focusing on the art of the possible, Toomey's hard right tea party base has been so consumed with discrediting the president and his policies that they've overshadowed the greatest gift the political gods could give – a troubled rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

“We missed opportunities to perhaps secure the savings from the spending caps from two years ago,” he said. “And I think we also missed opportunities to peel off some of the really egregious aspects of Obamacare. You don't get to dictate terms when you only control one chamber of the federal government.”

Further, they've blinded themselves to a promising window of the economic recovery and to the dramatic changes their very pressures to reduce government spending have wrought on the federal deficit.

“If policymakers can reasonably get it together and literally get off the front pages for a while I am very optimistic that the private economy is going to take off,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, said Wednesday. “All the pre-conditions for a much better economy are in place.”

Zandi also noted that in the four years between the depths of the recession in 2009 and the recent end of fiscal 2013, the federal budget deficit has been halved from $1.4 trillion to about $650 billion.

“It's actually improving more quickly than most budget forecasters would have thought,” Zandi said. “That's with mediocre economic growth. If we get stronger growth, which I think is entirely plausible if we can figure out these battles in Washington, then I think our fiscal situation's going to look much, much improved a year or two from now.”

Toomey, who's fiscal acumen is so celebrated in Congress that he was chosen to serve on the ill-fated 2011 Super Committee, is aware of these changed conditions, but sees them differently.

“It's an effective fact,” he acknowledged. “The deficit is smaller. But everybody knows that's temporary, and within 10 years deficits are scheduled to explode again with no reversal in sight.”

And Toomey has already begun preparing for the next round of budgetary battles that will peak early next year.

“I'll be discussing with my colleagues starting on Monday exactly how we're going to approach this and it's my hope well be able to make some progress,” he added. “I have some ideas about how we can avoid future government shutdowns, and achieve the savings that are in current law.”

Still, Toomey will need to be cautious in his fiscal approach.

“He does have to be careful on how he presents that,” said Broussard. “You can't be seen as too eager to compromise, nor can you be seen as someone who puts out ideas that look good on paper but can't be taken seriously.”

Toomey can't bring his brand of practical problem-solving to bear in the Senate if he's not there. And that means keeping up appearances with his rabid tea party base as he did Wednesday.