A couple days after stepping down as president of the Club for Growth, former U.S. Congressman Pat Toomey made it official: He will challenge U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in the 2010 Republican Primary.

"Pennsylvanians deserve a voice in the U.S. Senate that will honor our values and fight for limited government, individual freedom and fiscal responsibility," Toomey said. "I will be that voice."

It's no coincidence Toomey chose April 15 to make his announcement.

From The Associated Press:

Toomey headed the Club for Growth, a national conservative group that advocates smaller government and lower taxes, from the time he left Congress in 2005 until he stepped down Monday. The group was a major supporter of his 2004 campaign.

Prior to his election to the first of three terms in Congress in 1998, the Harvard-educated Toomey worked as an investment banker and operated several restaurants and bars in Pennsylvania with his brothers.

How worried is 79-year-old Arlen Specter about Toomey?

From the AP:

More than a year before the May 2010 primary, the campaign was already under way as Toomey publicly confirmed his candidacy.

Specter this month put up a cable TV ad that sought to link Toomey's career as an investment banker more than a decade ago to the current chaos in the nation's financial markets.

Imagine that. A guy who has served in the Senate since 1990 and has been asleep at the wheel while the economy collapsed is trying to blame Toomey for the meltdown.

As I predicted in an earlier post, Specter may well drop out of the race before 2010 because of unspecified health reasons. Specter knows he can't win the Republican primary, so he will likely bow out before he is handed a humiliating loss at the hands of GOP voters.