Pro-Life Campaign Ready to Go to the Mat to Block Specter
by Jody Brown and Bill Fancher
November 17, 2004
(AgapePress) - Pro-life advocates are not letting Republican Senator Arlen Specter off the hook. Religious groups that oppose the ascension of Specter to chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee have protested outside a Senate office building.The fifth-term senator from Pennsylvania has been criticized for saying that pro-life judges are unlikely to be confirmed by the Senate. Many pro-life groups interpreted his remarks as an open warning to President Bush not to nominate individuals with a pro-life bent because they likely would not make it out of the Judiciary Committee. Since making those comments on the day after the election, he has promised he will not block any of the president's judicial nominees. Evidently that promise is not enough to extinguish pro-lifers' concerns.
Pro-lifers are mustering forces for a two-month campaign designed to prevent Senator Specter from chairing the Judiciary Committee. One of those high-profile activists is Jan LaRue of Concerned Women for America. She says unless Specter's fellow Committee members decide to promote someone else to the post of chairman, the Pennsylvania Republican would be in a controlling position to do what he has vowed to do in the past: block any judicial nomination that would threaten the future of Roe v. Wade.
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Jan LaRue |
LaRue believes Specter's philosophy is flawed. "Arlen Specter wants judges who share his view that the Constitution is living and growing -- which sounds more like he's describing a fungus than the highest law of the land," the CWA's chief counsel says.She is convinced Specter cannot be trusted to carry out President Bush's agenda because he opposes nearly all of that agenda. There are several other qualified Committee members, she says, who would make a better chairman. "Give us Jon Kyl, give us Jeff Sessions, give us John Cornyn," she laments. "Give us any true 'red' Republican -- but don't give us Arlen Specter."
In terms of seniority, Specter is next in line to succeed outgoing Committee chairman Orrin Hatch. She takes issue with that tradition -- particularly when Specter has gone back on his word before on pro-family issues. "Why in the world would Republicans take the great risk of trusting Specter?" she asks. "This is too important to prefer the tradition of seniority above getting it right."
LaRue says having Specter chair the Judiciary Committee makes about as much sense has having anti-Bush filmmaker Michael Moore head up the Republican National Committee.
Precedence? Or Principle?
Specter met on Tuesday with fellow Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, to discuss his pending nomination as chairman. Senator Hatch says he supports Specter and expects the Pennsylvania senator to win the backing of the full panel as well. After the meeting, Hatch remarked, "Senator Specter handled himself very well. I expect him to be the next chairman. I think it will be resolved satisfactorily."
But the executive director of the Christian Defense Coalition, who was among those protesting outside the Senate Office Building, says religious conservatives who made the difference in the election do not want Specter to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"If Senator Specter becomes head of the Judiciary [Committee], it is a betrayal and a slap in the face to millions of pro-life Americans who worked to help re-elect this president and get a 55 Republican majority in the Senate," the Coalition's Rev. Patrick Mahoney stated.
Like LaRue, Mahoney has trouble believing Specter would change his stripes after four Senate terms that reflect a liberal record and beliefs about the Constitution that are contrary to the president's. "Senator Specter needs to be passionately and aggressively pushing the judicial agenda of President Bush," he says. "Even by his own comments and his own words, Senator Specter is not the right person for this job."
Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council was also among those outside the Senate Office Building on Tuesday. Schenck accuses Specter of taking advantage of the political situation now occurring in the nation's capital. He says Specter wants to use "the unprecedented success of this president and of his fellow Republicans in the last election" to claim the Committee chairmanship "while he rejects the very platform that gave the Republicans that success."
Senate Majority Leader Frist is under the scrutiny of the pro-lifers. "Senator Frist must decide: seniority -- or principle? Seniority -- or the core of the Republican Party who help elect them?" says the Christian Defense Coalition's Mahoney. "That's what's at stake here."
Associated Press contributed to this story.
