Posted on 03/12/2004 1:09:11 PM PST by GeneralHavoc
What’s a Republican? Ten-month-old Vanessa clearly has no clue. And yet she’s about to play a bit part in a political battle that may help settle that question -- at least in Pennsylvania, and possibly in the U.S. Senate.
Vanessa and her 18-year-old mother, Mary, occupy one of a row of chairs arrayed along a wall of the Community Room at Washington Hospital. Both long walls are lined with teen mothers and fathers, dressed in drool-on-me-casual clothes and holding well-behaved babies. The center of the room features an oval of chairs occupied by more stylish teens, and no babies. That’s because the inner ring is reserved for "peer educators," many of whom travel to area middle schools preaching sexual abstinence. The symbolism couldn’t be clearer: abstinence in, teen pregnancy out.
At the top of the inner circle, directly opposite the TV cameras, sit Republican senators Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum. The symbolism of that pairing is also crystalline. Specter is being called a liberal by his primary challenger, Republican Congressman Pat Toomey. What better way to counter Toomey’s charge than to appear at an abstinence education forum with archconservative Santorum?
"Sen. Santorum and I have long been supporters of abstinence," says Specter. "When you eliminate an unintended pregnancy, you don’t have to face any issues on abortion. … Sen. Santorum recently led the floor fight on eliminating partial birth abortions, and I supported him."
Santorum adds that he’s "thankful to Sen. Specter for appropriating the money needed to get these kinds of programs going in Pennsylvania," including $272,000 in federal money for Washington Hospital’s Teen Outreach program, which trains and dispatches the peer educators. Left unmentioned are votes like Specter’s of June 2000, against proposals to cut off federal funding to schools that provide contraception to students. Toomey is using that vote to paint the incumbent as a playground pusher of morning-after pills.
Then nine peer educators stand, don black-and-white masks, and read first-person monologues describing different teen attitudes toward sex, from prudish to promiscuous. The scripts aren’t subtle: abstinence good, premarital sex bad. When it’s over, Specter, a 74-year-old former prosecutor, asks one of the girls who read a sluttish monologue for more details on her decisions. After a long pause, somebody reminds him that the monologues were fictitious. Oh, OK. New line of questioning.
After some discussion of the peer educators’ work, Specter peers beyond the inner circle and invites Mary and Vanessa to come and join them. And with that, a carefully scripted campaign event starts to get messy.
"This primary is a race between a mainstream Republican," says Pat Toomey, "and a very liberal Republican." To bolster his mainstream credentials, Toomey has on a winter afternoon brought with him to Pittsburgh one Robert Heron Bork.
Bork was the bearded U.S. Supreme Court nominee who the Senate sent packing in 1987. At his confirmation hearings, Specter questioned Bork on his philosophy of "original intent," under which judges should be guided by the intentions of the Constitution’s authors. That philosophy ran counter to Specter’s, which Specter described in his 2000 book Passion for Truth as holding that the Constitution is "a living, growing document, responsive to the needs of the nation." Specter voted no on Bork’s nomination, leading to a 58-42 rejection of President Ronald Reagan’s nominee, and earning him the ire of conservatives nationwide.
Bork went on to become an author and conservative icon, but this is the first time he’s actively campaigned against Specter. "If he were re-elected, Sen. Specter would be the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee," Bork says. "He has a record of supporting quite liberal judges. … He thinks the judges should be making up the Constitution, in many respects." Specter supports affirmative action, anti-hate-crimes legislation, campaign finance reform and the international criminal court, Bork continues.
Those may not be the issues most on the minds of Pennsylvanians contending with joblessness and international tensions, but they are lynchpins of Toomey’s campaign to unseat Specter. It’s a campaign with a simple mantra: "I’m the conservative alternative to the liberal Arlen Specter," says Toomey, as he sips coffee at Rebecca Tambellini Bar & Casual Dining at Station Square.
Since he arrived in Congress in 1999, Toomey has voted with the American Conservative Union’s position 96 percent of the time, according to the ACU Web site. Specter has voted the conservative line 56 percent of the time since 1999, and just 42 percent of the time since his 1981 arrival in the Senate. Toomey, who hails from the Allentown suburb of Zionsville, opposes abortion rights, hate-crimes legislation and campaign finance reform. Toomey wants more tax cuts, accompanied by cuts in all discretionary federal programs except defense and homeland security. Specter was one of a handful of senators who forced President George Bush to trim his 2001 tax cut by $250 billion.
Specter’s campaign has sought to paint Toomey as a fringe candidate. "He’s not far right, he’s far out!" says one Specter press release that cites 76 votes in which Toomey was the only Pennsylvania Republican on a given side of an issue. Toomey’s "lonely votes" are mostly against spending proposals, expansions of parks, and foreign aid, and he treats them as a badge of honor. "There are times I’ve been part of a relatively small group of members of Congress voting against something because I think it’s inconsistent with our Constitution, or because it’s egregiously bad policy," he says.
Toomey says his independence stems from a pledge he took in 1998 to serve no more than three terms in the House. (He’s finishing his third this year.) The term-limit pledge "has really liberated me from the pressure to conform," he says. "Especially career politicians, when they get to Washington, feel an enormous pressure to conform. … Arlen Specter, his priority is to conform with the Democratic Party."
Specter’s campaign has given special attention to Toomey’s lonely November vote against the Republican Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, supported and signed by Bush. That bill has been trashed by Democrats for providing too little coverage to seniors, and for failing to do anything about spiraling drug costs. Toomey and 18 other House Republicans voted against it because they thought it did too much. "The fact that there is no limit on the cost of this thing scares me," Toomey tells the Pittsburgh Republican Committee, when asked about his vote. Medicare, he adds, "is unsustainable and insolvent and fundamentally in need of reform."
At Toomey events, supporters rarely mention his votes against Medicare drug benefits or campaign finance reform. They mention Specter’s vote against Bork, Specter’s "not proven" vote on charges against Democratic President Bill Clinton, and even Specter’s pivotal role in crafting the controversial single-bullet theory on the assassination of President John Kennedy, 40 years ago. And Toomey sympathizers almost invariably bring up one issue: abortion. "I’m pro-life," says Pittsburgh Republican Committee Chairman Bob Hillen. "Specter is not pro-life. Toomey is." Hillen says he’s not supporting Toomey per se, because the Republican State Committee has endorsed Specter, and local committees aren’t allowed to buck the state. But the Specter campaign has accused him of breaking ranks, Hillen says, perhaps because he helped Toomey get the petition signatures necessary to get on the ballot. "When I was circulating [nominating] petitions, I carried both Specter and Toomey petitions," Hillen says. "More people wanted to sign the Toomey petitions."
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghcitypaper.ws ...
Congressman Billybob
I don't think Republicans like Toomey can win open Senate seats in Pennsylvania during presidential years, but this is a damn clever way to get around state committee by-laws.
Can you quantify this?
By the way, that's good news. What are his chances against the Democrat?
Sounds like his ole bud Orin Hatch. Hatch and Kennedy have been joined at the hip for so long, Hatch is beginning to speak with a Boston accent.
Pro-life Toomey will draw like Santorum and even give a boost to Bush. PA is the home of pro-life Democrats like Gov Scranton who the Democrats axed from their convention.
Best laugh of the day.
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