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Former Insider Predicts Specter Would Apply 'Litmus Test' Surreptitiously

by Chad Groening and Jody Brown
November 18, 2004
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(AgapePress) - An attorney and former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee says conservatives have good reason to be concerned about the possibility of Senator Arlen Specter taking over the chairmanship of that committee.

It was reported on Wednesday that pro-life advocates are rallying their forces to protest against Senator Specter's ascension to the lead role of the Senate committee that, among other things, screens presidential nominations for federal judiciary posts. That reaction is in response to the senator's post-election remarks that implied President Bush should rethink any intentions he has of nominating judges who might harbor desires to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that legalized abortion in the United States. Any such nominations, Specter warned, may never make it of Committee -- or be filibustered by Senate Democrats and never be brought up for a full Senate vote.

Senate Republicans are scheduled to determine committee composition and leadership roles in early January. Meetings earlier this week between Specter and other Republican members of the Senate Judiciary seem to indicate the Pennsylvania lawmaker has gained their needed support. If selected for the chairmanship, Specter would succeed outgoing chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah, who this week received from Jan LaRue of Concerned Women for America a list of ten questions [PDF] she feels the prospective chairman should answer before his Republican colleagues.

Kevin Ring has worked with conservative members of both the House and Senate. He recently published Scalia Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court's Wittiest, Most Outspoken Judge. Despite recent comments by Specter to the contrary, Ring is convinced the senator would use a litmus test on any pro-life nominee to the Supreme Court -- and would use it in a not-so-obvious fashion.

"Instead of just applying the litmus test, he would act as if there was another reason why he was opposing them," Ring suggests. "And then that reason, whether it was temperament, experience, or their overall philosophy, would be picked up and used by the Democrats like a sledge hammer over all of President Bush's nominees."

The author predicts problems with Specter as Committee chairman. "Conservatives are right to expect that the president's instincts are good so that all of his nominees are going to be somewhat similar in that regard," he says. "And if Senator Specter has an issue with one, he's probably going to have an issue with all of them."

According to Ring, Specter's rhetoric and his actions do not always match up. "I think it is a serious concern," he says. "Although he is saying all the right things now, his instinct was that there would be a litmus test on Roe v. Wade. Now he points to the fact that he has voted for confirmation of pro-life justices [in the past] -- and he has. But I just think he is someone who has a different philosophy of the courts than the president himself."

Ring believes it remains an open question whether Specter can ultimately damage the president's ability to get pro-life justices on the Supreme Court.

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