Dobson Emphatically Endorses Pro-Family Republican in Penn. Senate Primary (Toomey vs. Specter)

Dobson Emphatically Endorses Pro-Family Republican in Penn. Senate Primary Three-Term Congressman Toomey Challenging 'Moderate' Incumbent Specter By Jody Brown

(AgapePress) - Pennsylvania's four-term senator, Arlen Specter, is facing a tough challenge in next week's Republican primary. Why? Some observers says it is because his opponent, U.S. Congressman Pat Toomey, has a strong pro-life, pro-family voting history that resonates with conservatives in The Keystone State. And Specter's chance for a fifth term in Congress may have taken another hit, now that a nationally-known pro-family spokesman has publicly endorsed Toomey.

Dr. James Dobson admits he seldom endorses political candidates. But the pro-family leader says it is "imperative" that Pat Toomey, a conservative Republican who has served three terms in the U.S. House, win the primary on April 27 against Specter. Speaking on behalf of his fellow conservatives, Dobson says in a letter dated March 22, 2004, that Specter opposes "nearly everything we hold dear."

For example, Dobson -- offering his endorsement solely as an individual and not as the representative of the organizations he leads -- describes the 74-year-old Specter as "a one-man roadblock" to the appointment of pro-family judges to the federal bench. And the four-term senator, he says, opposes a federal amendment that would protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Toomey, on the other hand, would be "a splendid pro-family, pro-life voice" in the Senate, he says.

"[Toomey] is a man of great courage to take on a sitting senator," Dobson states in the letter, "and the defeat of Arlen Specter would send a mighty signal that the days of waffling, devious, anti-family Republicans who are liberals in disguise is finally over."

Dobson, who rarely makes public appearances, will be speaking in support of Toomey Friday evening at the Lancaster Host Resort in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Ixnay on Moderates Tom Ferrick, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, points out other dynamics that could play a big factor in the possible downfall of Specter. He says outside of Specter's moderate home base, Republicans in the state tend to be rather conservative -- and "they don't want no stinkin' moderates representing them in Washington," Ferrick says.

The columnist also notes that since Specter was first elected in 1980, some of the Republican demographics in the state have changed considerably. Twenty-four years ago, there were approximately 200,000 Republicans in Philadelphia and 223,000 in five nearby conservative counties. According to Ferrick, there are now less than 170,000 Republican voters in Philadelphia -- and more than 440,000 in those same five counties.

That poses a dilemma for Specter, he says. "He's a moderate Republican who doesn't inspire passion among his supporters," Ferrick writes. "A lack of passion can translate into low turnout. Low turnout can translate into trouble for Specter because the GOP conservatives will show up. Put it together and what have you got? Pennsylvania's senior senator could take a fall."

Clear Cut on Family Issues On social and cultural issues, the difference between the two lawmakers is pretty clear cut. Congressman Pat Toomey opposes Roe v. Wade; Senator Arlen Specter supports it. Toomey co-sponsored and voted for the ban on partial-birth abortion; Specter joined pro-abortion Democrats in voting against the ban. The congressman voted for the House version of the Federal Marriage Amendment; the incumbent senator strongly opposes the Senate version of the FMA, currently being held up in the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Specter is a member.

Also during his tenure in Congress, Specter has earned the label "moderate Republican" while opposing such things as school choice and the Boy Scouts' access to public facilities unless they agree to allow homosexual troop leaders; and supporting legislation that would allow human cloning and expand "hate crimes" legislation.

In a recent poll conducted by Quinnipiac University, 37 percent of Republicans in Pennsylvania preferred a candidate called "Someone Else" over Arlen Specter. Now it remains to be seen how the incumbent does when facing off against a real candidate with a real name recognized by Pennsylvanians.

If it were up to the American Conservative Union, the decision would be clear: the ACU gives Toomey a 96 percent lifetime rating, and Specter a 43 percent rating. Republican Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania's other U.S. senator, has an 87 percent lifetime rating from the ACU.

Spector and Hatch are both dangerous to the survival of conservative values.

Memogate

By Manuel Miranda
Sunday, April 18, 2004

Pittsburgh has a unique link to the past in the judicial nominations wars. And every Republican in America knows that Pennsylvania holds the key to the future in the coming Republican primary that may decide who the next Senate Judiciary Committee chairman is -- or is not.
Before moving to Utah, Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) first practiced law in Pittsburgh. In those days, he was a liberal Democrat. The profitable industry that has grown around obstructing nominees would not be what it is if it were not for Hatch's unique manner, or Arlen Specter's populist votes against Jeff Sessions (now the senator from Alabama) and Robert Bork (as in "borking") in the 1980s.

Those early liberal victories were the playground where today's highly paid judge-killers first shaped their career plans. Hatch's recent role in Memogate, at the sad end of his chairmanship, tells the rest of the story as to how the bullies he calls friends have been emboldened over the years.

Pocket liberals

For three years, and especially during the Jim Jeffords interregnum when Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) controlled the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hatch repeatedly warned Americans that Democrats were in the pocket of liberal special interest groups in their unprecedented obstruction of President Bush's judicial nominees. Hatch's alarm was so compelling that a National Review cover displayed Leahy sitting as chairman connected to puppet strings hanging above him.

Last year, Senate Republicans led by Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) argued that Miguel Estrada, the first judicial nominee ever filibustered, was being blocked by Democrats for no other reason than he was Hispanic.

On the day that Estrada withdrew, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) stated the case with surgical precision. Democrats, he said, were intent on preventing George Bush from having a qualified Hispanic serving on an appellate court that the president could elevate to the Supreme Court, should a vacancy arise.

How can one then understand the surrender of Senate Republicans in the Memogate affair? When presented with proof positive that liberal special interest groups were so much in control of Senate Democrats that they actually cast votes at their meetings in directing what judicial nominee should get a hearing and who should be rejected, who could imagine that Orrin Hatch could lead the charge to surrender?

Evidence & retreat

When presented with Democrat memos stating the reason for blocking Estrada was "because ... he is Latino," and Democrats did not want to repeat their mistake in confirming Clarence Thomas to a lower court, who could imagine that Republicans would not only retreat but burn down their crops as they went?

And to add injury to self-inflicted wound, as reward for collaborating with Democrat obstruction in Memogate, Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) promptly promised Republicans that no more appellate court confirmations would occur this year.

The frustration of Republicans across the country over Memogate is well known to me as the wounded staffer abandoned in the Republican retreat. It is also understandable. We know that Majority Leader Frist has a Republican majority, but not a conservative majority solid enough to defeat the Democrat filibusters. We accept that. But Memogate was a skirmish Republicans could have won. It was an opportunity misunderstood by key staffers more skilled at keeping the trains running than in their senators' lasting reputations.

Emasculated GOP

The essence of the Republican surrender was not just the abandonment of loyal staff, it was the submission to the word "improper." Democrats seized on Orrin Hatch's early judge-and-jury statement that the reading of the memos had been improper.

By bowing to Hatch's ill-advised leadership on the propriety of reading the Democrat memos, Republicans rendered themselves emasculated from investigating the corruption evidenced in the Democrat memos themselves -- those made public and the hundreds of others still under wraps.

Hatch's need to be right, even with the use of whisper campaigns to keep his colleagues under rein, was more than surrender. Other senators were forced to abandon the field entirely.

Hatch told Frist that if I resigned my position, Democrats would be assuaged. The matter would end. It didn't. Hatch told me that if I resigned, he would return the focus to the substance of the memos. He didn't.

Frist told conservative leaders that having me resign would be best for me. It wasn't. Nor was it best for my young family. Frist told conservative leaders, as did other Republican senators, the line that Hatch had fed them -- that the investigation would find an illegal hacking. It didn't.

'Seduced by access'

Frist was duped. Most conservative leaders inside the beltway also allowed themselves to be duped because, at the end, Washingtonians are easily seduced by the access that gives status. But one has to forgive well-meaning people who are duped.

Throughout Memogate, Hatch cleverly prevented colleagues from contradicting him, preventing them from arguing what they came to know: that the reading of nonconfidential Democrat documents on an unprotected computer server was not improper -- because it was not illegal, was not contrary to Senate rules, and was not a violation of any applicable code of ethics.

As one computer security expert wrote, this affair wasn't Memogate, it was Memogate-less. Democrat gross negligence had made their memos available as if they had been left "in the Capitol rotunda."

I do admit that reading these documents on an unprotected server to help defend the president's embattled nominees was political hardball, and I have learned that one shouldn't play hardball with limpwristed teammates.

So where is the future in the crisis of federal judicial nominations? It is in the Senate elections of 2004 and 2006, when voters can restore the depleted number of principled conservatives and reduce the number of Republican senators too concerned about appearances -- and not enough about fairness and loyalty.

Manuel Miranda resigned in February as counsel to Senate Republican leader Bill Frist after volunteering that he had read unprotected Democrat documents available on a shared file server of the Senate Judiciary Committee published in the media in November 2003. A Senate inquiry subsequently confirmed that more than 150 Judiciary staffers of both parties had open access to each other's documents without any improper hacking, but that only two Republican staffers admitted to reading the Democrat memos. Miranda also is former counsel to Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch. His father is a native of Beaver Falls.

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