Specter Haunts Second Term

            King David and his son King Solomon both had a failing that affected their rule that is sometimes overlooked. They put confidence in the wrong people at times. George Bush has the same failing. The Great Conciliator, who through recognizing and trying to encourage people to do what was right sometimes contributes to his problems, has already laid the seeds for trouble in his second term by doing that. He has made the mistake of thinking he could make “lemon sucking” Arlen Specter his friend.

            It was not till Specter’s lack of loyalty was revealed in the early fallout after the election that I learned he has been credited with being the man who invented the “magic bullet” scenario after President Kennedy’s assassination. Apparently he intends to fire a magic bullet of his own at the President’s mandate to, among other things, put people who interpret the Constitution strictly on the bench of the Supreme Court.

            Most people do not realize how much effort President Bush put into getting Specter reelected. He was not a shoo-in by any means. Tom Strode commenting on this said, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Bush supported Specter against conservative Pat Toomey in the GOP primary. Not only did this support mean that he had compromised his own position, but many of the President’s conservative supporters looked at the act as a betrayal. Had they focused on that issue instead of the bigger picture it could have cost the Presidential election. (Fifty-six percent of those whose vote was formed by the abortion issue were Bush supporters. Specter has been consistently pro-abortion.) Now, it may cost the President his goal of transforming the Supreme Court. Bush expressed this goal telling reporters on television he would, “pick somebody who knows the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law. You might have heard that several times. I meant what I said.”

            Arlen Specter was not needed by the GOP. Rick Santorum may have been the one who convinced Bush to support Specter. If he was he made the President wrong morally and as time proved it also made him wrong politically. They thought they needed Specter to secure the Keystone State. (He not only did not deliver that, he did not even try!) They may have thought they needed him to have a majority in the Senate. (They did not. They could have had Toomey.) If they thought Specter had some great pull in Pennsylvania, surely they caught on when the very mention of his name got Dick Cheney boos at a rally a couple of weeks before the election.

            There is no good reason to trust Arlen Specter. Specter sank Bork. What he did to Anita Hill was a smokescreen. For any pro-lifer, the Borking of Bork should be an unforgivable sin. When Anthony Kennedy, Bork’s substitute changed his mind at the last moment in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey and cast the deciding vote to save Roe v. Wade, Arlen Specter had effectively saved Roe v. Wade, a ruling he has repeatedly gone on record saying was rightly decided and ought not be overturned.

Bush and Santorum told us Specter will play nice as judiciary chairman. Yet in a debate this October, Specter promised to deliver us "centrist" judges. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says he told them he would not allow any "extremist" judges on the court. Both the Post-Gazette and the Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed him on the grounds he would save Roe again and block more Antonin Scalias and Clarence Thomases. Specter is on record that he does not consider any of the present justices to be legal heavyweights. When you find out what Specter defines legal heavyweights to be you find they are all liberals who treat the Constitution as something that is theirs to alter.

            What is Specter about? He now knows he, thank God, is not going to become President, and he is not going to sit on the High Court, at least not from a Republican appointment. One person said he had “watched Arlen Spector since he was district attorney of Philadelphia County many years ago.  He has always been a far left wing liberal espousing the most liberal causes that best served the idea of big government at any cost.  In my opinion his actions have proven over many years that he is a multi-faced liar, depending on what position best serves his personal interests.” Taking what this person said at face value there is more than simply an issue of a liberal leaning. The issue is his personal power. Specter has pursued power and he has figured out that the liberal agenda affords greater opportunities for him to have and use power than upholding a conservative position.

            It is not simply that Arlen Specter is a “running buddy” of Joe Biden. When your support for the causes of your party cannot be counted on every time a big issue is on the table people think they have to woo you to their cause. They have to give you something and in politics that gives you power. A GOP Senator explained his difficulty in winning votes in the upper chamber this way, "I only have 51 votes really only 47." That was an admission that Specter, like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Lincoln Chafee is a Republican in name only. Not being a team player can give you power. Legal scholar Dennis Hutchinson said Specter's message to the White House appeared "a way of asserting his authority" as he prepares to chair the Judiciary Committee when Orrin Hatch’s, term-limit keeps him from keeping the post next year. It is about power! But maybe Specter has “counted his chickens before they hatched.”

            When you study the men who betrayed their leaders in the Bible, you realize there was plain evidence before the big betrayal that all was not right. These things were written for our instruction, so the Bush/Cheney ticket should have already caught on that Specter is getting in position to haunt the next four years. Bible scholars should pick up a parallel between events to be found in Scripture and the "Kerry and Specter for Working Families" signs posted around Southeastern Pennsylvania. These signs were created, paid for, and posted by a 527 created by Roger Stone, chairman of Specter's 1996 presidential campaign. The Democrats had used what was supposed to be independent 527’s to promote their cause, and many believe Senator Specter was in their playbook and not the Republican’s.

            Arlen Specter stands to gain the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee following the traditional plan of the Senate. The good news is that this is not automatic. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, another Republican on the panel, did not offer a ringing endorsement. When asked Wednesday about Specter's impending chairmanship he said, "We'll have to see where he stands." Cornyn, is a close friend of Bush and worked to get the president's nominees through the Senate. "I'm hoping that he will stand behind the president's nominees. I'm intending to sit down and discuss with him how things are going to work. We want to know what he's going do and how things are going to work." Jeff Sessions, whose nomination to a federal judgeship Specter killed, later became a Republican senator from Alabama and now sits on the Judiciary Committee with Specter. He might want to remember what Specter said about him and his position on Civil Rights when he kept him from that appointment not all that long ago.

            If Specter is allowed to haunt the Judiciary Committee Chairmanship, it will be considered a slap in the face of all the moral values voters who supported Bush. Democrats will rejoice at the perceived betrayal of trust, coming from the fact that Bush ran opposing Senators blocking his appointments, such as Sen. Specter has promised to do. They will say “see his own party is against him,” and they will use that to promote another hyper socialist candidate such as Hillary Clinton in 2008.