Religious Groups Launch Two-Month Campaign to Remove Specter

Christianpost.com ^ | Nov. 17, 2004 Posted: 5:39:57PM EST | Katherine T. Phan

[Ed Current]

Religious groups rallied outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building yesterday to launch a two-month campaign protesting Sen. Arlen Specter’s ascension to chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Director of Christian Defense Coalition Rev. Patrick Mahoney, one of the principal organizers of the "pray-in" demonstration, said one of the things which went undetected under the national media radar was how much "judicial activism" motivated "the core base of the Republican Party, pro-life, pro-family, evangelicals, and conservative Catholics" to get out to the polls.

Mahoney said it was activist judges who were responsible for decriminalizing abortion, trying to remove the phrase ‘one nation under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance, ordering the state of Massachusetts to craft legislation to allow same-sex marriage, and overturning a ban on Partial Birth Abortion.

"We realize a critical issue of this election is who will control, who put men and women on the federal bench and most importantly on the Supreme Court bench," said Mahoney, who noted that Chief Justice William Rehnquist will not likely return to the U.S. Supreme Court bench until January and there would likely be as many as three vacancies in the Supreme Court in the next four years.

He said the groups did not make the sacrifice of "countless hours of campaigning…to wake up on Nov. 3 and realize that Arlen Specter may be the next chairperson of the Senate Judiciary."

Mahoney was among the group of 20 protestors/speakers who gathered to oppose Specter’s chairmanship to the Senate Judiciary, the Committee that determines which judicial nominees go to the floor for a vote. Specter is next in line to assume the Judiciary post due to Senate rules of seniority.

Specter set off a furor among fellow Republicans and conservatives after he suggested in a Nov. 3 news conference that the President’s pro-life judicial nominees would not get approval from the Senate.

"The president is well aware of what happened, when a number of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster," Specter said then. "And I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning."

He has since appeared on T.V. shows and reassured Republican committee members and Senate leaders that he has never applied a "litmus test" on any judicial nominees and have supported the President’s judicial nominees in the past. On Tuesday, Specter attended a closed-door meeting with the Republican committee members to make his case for chairmanship.

"I expect him to have the support of the committee," said the panel’s current chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who is stepping down due to Senate-imposed six-year term limits.

"Nobody in the meeting was against Arlen," Hatch said with Specter at his side. "Senator Specter handled himself very well and frankly, I'm for him, as I should be."

Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America, said there many other good choices for Judiciary chairmanship and that the Republican Conference Rules do not require them to adhere to seniority when selecting the Committee chairman.

"It’s far more important to get it right than to adhere to tradition," LaRue said at the rally.

"The President wants judges who respect the text of the Constitution and their limited rule as judges," she said. "Arlen Specter wants judges who share his views that the Constitution is living and growing –which sounds more like he is describing a fungus than the highest law of the land."

LaRue said Specter could not be trusted in representing the interests of the President. While the President is opposed to abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and same-sex marriage, Specter supports all these, according to LaRue.

"Give us Jon Kyl, give us Jeff Sessions, give us John Cornyn," she said. "Give us any true 'red' Republican -- but don't give us Arlen Specter."

Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council charged Specter for using "the unprecedented success of this president and of his fellow Republicans in the last election" to claim the chair while rejecting the party’s platform.

Mahoney said the campaign to remove Specter would continue until the vote in January regardless of what conversations take place between Specter and Senate leaders because it will be the new Republican majority who will have the final say.

"If Sen. Specter becomes head of the Senate Judiciary, it is a betrayal and a slap in the face to millions to pro-life Americans who worked to re-elect this President and get a 55 majority in the Senate," said Mahoney.

[Ed Current]

Republican National Coalition for Life

The Chicago Sun Times (11/11/04) says Senator Arlen Specter wants a private meeting with Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee next week in order to "hash things out," according to Texas Senator John Cornyn, a former Texas Supreme Court judge, who appears to be emerging as a key player in the fight over whether Specter will be awarded the chairmanship of the powerful Judiciary Committee. It is unclear what Senator Cornyn’s role actually is. He says he wants to find out what Specter intends to do regarding Bush nominees to the federal courts. That sounds a bit like he might vote for him, provided Specter says the right things. Let Senator Cornyn, the other GOP members of the Judiciary Committee, and every Republican Senator (all are members of the Senate Republican Caucus and all will likely have a say in this matter) that Senator Arlen Specter is totally unacceptable for the position of chairman for the following reasons:

• Senator Specter opposes tort reform. He has received more money from trial lawyers than any Republican, and is third behind John Kerry and Joe Lieberman. He received $1.8 million from trial lawyers in his 2004 campaign. Specter’s son, Shanin Specter, who gave $2,000 to John Edwards,’ is partner in one of Pennsylvania’s most successful firms that excels in suing doctors. (Washington Times, "Specter's Voting Record" — 11/11/04)
• Senator Specter supports the United Nations CEDAW Treaty (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women), which would guarantee an international right to abortion. The U.S. Senate has refused to ratify CEDAW.

Senator Specter "is an avid supporter of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which would subject our military personnel to prosecution for war crimes before hostile international judges, and deny them the protections of our Constitution." In 2002, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed and President Bush signed, the American Servicemembers Protection Act that exempted our military from the threat of the ICC. However, Senator Specter was among the few in the Senate and the only Republican, who voted against this amendment." (Concerned Women for America Press Release, 11/11/04) President Bush opposes the ICC, as do most Americans.

That Awful Specter- some Arlen Specter links

[TexasTransplant]

Write, Call, Fax, Email again ping!

[Ed Current]

F.R. poll favors Jon Kyl.

[Cicero]

Well, this article states the nub of it. But it needs to be laid out in detail.

1. A large number of conservative voters turned out to vote for Bush and to get their friends and neighbors to vote for Bush specifically because of the issue of judicial appointments. I personally considered that to be the most important issue in the campaign, and I know a lot of others did too.

2. A lot of these same people know that if Karl Rove and George Bush had not intervened in the Pennsylvania primaries in support of Specter, he would not have won the nomination. Therefore, if Specter is appointed to chair the committee and there are ANY delays or problems, the blame will be assigned squarely to those responsible, Bush and Rove.

3. Specter is a liberal, pro-abort RINO who has repeatedly broken his word in the past and cannot be trusted not to do so again as soon as he sees an opportunity.

4. Finally, if Specter is appointed to the chairmanship, he will be in a strong position to blackmail Bush. He will be in a position to make endless problems for Bush, and Bush will not be in a strong position to punish him in return.

All in all, this Specter business has been stupid politics on the part of Rove and Bush from start to finish. In most respects they did extremely well in this election, but nobody is perfect, and this is one thing they really screwed up on. They came out holding the sack, with Pennsylvania voting for kerry and specter, who allowed his handlers to help campaign for kerry, promising trouble before one single day was out.

[Ed Current]

House, Senate close ranks to protect two controversial members

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, firmed up their support for Specter, who's come under attack from conservative and anti-abortion groups as he prepares to assume the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Both cases illustrate Congress' determination to protect its own, even if that has risks.

"Democrats and Republicans, liberal or conservative, House members or senators, these individuals face an uncomprehending world outside the Congress," said Ross K. Baker, a congressional scholar at Rutgers University. "It creates a bond among them and causes them to set up protective mechanisms to prevent outsiders of all kinds - from interests groups to the president - from tampering with the workings of the institution."

The Senate is protecting the individualism and the autonomy from outside partisan forces," he said. "It's clinging to some norms about seniority, reciprocity and respect for a colleague. ... They have built a cocoon around him and insulated him from it."

[Ed Current]

All in all, this Specter business has been stupid politics on the part of Rove and Bush from start to finish.

WorldNetDaily: The Pennsylvania Treason

The fact that Specter's eventual margin of victory was so razor-thin made one thing absolutely undeniable. Without the influence and treachery of Bush and Santorum, we would have seen a raging pro-abort who has always been viciously hostile toward anything that the pro-life movement does replaced with a pro-lifer. It is laughable to suggest that the combined efforts of a Republican president and a Republican senator can't influence even 2 percent of the votes in a Republican primary. Given that, it is simply a fact that Bush and Santorum cost the pro-life movement this election.

Bush and Santorum defenders will claim that if Toomey had won he might turn around and lose in the general election and, thereby, turn control of the Senate over to the Democrats.

That's garbage. First, upon what do these people base the assumption that Toomey could somehow beat the senior incumbent United States senator in his state, but then not be able to beat a non-incumbent Democrat? If their claim is that Toomey's advocacy for the right-to-life makes him unelectable in a Pennsylvania general election, how do they explain Santorum's election?

[Cicero]

Exactly. What Rove seems unable to understand, even though the past couple of elections have proved it several times over, is that all things being equal ordinary Americans don't approve of abortion. It's the elite, the media, the professors, the chattering classes who support abortion. No doubt it's the people Rove talks to at cocktail parties. But union workers, Hispanics, blacks, the great majority of ordinary people are basically pro-life. The idea of killing babies makes them uncomfortable.

They voted for Specter because he's a smooth operator with a lot of seniority, not because he's pro-abortion.

[MHGinTN]

I will likely get flamed for this, but it is looking more and more like the leadership of the Republican Party wants division, wants religious conservatives up in arms arguing with 'more moderate' republicans. This creates a void into which some can sneak and increase their power under the radar. I'm becoming very distrustful of a Republican Party that has gone on a drunken spending bing and is now supporting a clearly pro-abortion Senator for the Chairmanship of the most vital Committee where the future protection of the unborn, reduction of judicial activism and tort reform will be hashed out. Are we beginning to see that the Republicans aren't really pro-life and have merely been using our longing for abortion reform in order to get our votes without reforming the horrors? I fear we are being betrayed by those we've entrusted to speak out now that the democrats abortion stranglehold has been broken.

We are being betrayed and told to like it as the better alternative to the blood-soaked democrats. At their current pace, the Pubbies will be just like what we began to overthrow in the early nineties.

Perhaps the politician's description of himself in the movie 'Hunt For Red October' is true for either of the corrupt political parties. Republicans will prove themselves corrupt to the core if they will not take positive steps to increase protection for the unborn ... and standing Arlen Specter at the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee is a huge negative that the leadership absolutely knows we can see for what it is.

It is a lack of fundamental character to play the crony-ism of senate fraternity when actual unborn children's' lives are at stake. What Hatch, Frist, and others are doing is sleazy, downright sleazy and proof of moral failing.

[Hildy]

THIS ELECTION WAS NOT ABOUT ABORTION.

[MHGinTN]

The election was about values, values and character. To raise such an one as Specter to chair a committee that will being trying to achieve tort reform, reduction of judicial activism, and reform of abortion policy is a clear indication of lack of character, lack of fundamental values we hold and which values caused us to vote for the Pubbies this time out.

[Hildy]

This election was about security.

[zzen01]

You are clueless.

[cpforlife.org]

Alright folks this is getting serious. I didn’t want it to get to this, but we must not allow specter to become chairman, and now ALL the facts must be opened:

If we go to http://www.wordsmyth.net and enter “specter” we get

1. a ghost or apparition, esp. one that causes dread or terror.

Similar Words: wraith , figment, demon , presence , phantasm , nonentity

Definition 2. a threat or possibility that haunts or instills fear.

Specter = Wraith

Anyone familiar w Tolkien knows that wraith's only business is death and destruction; and certainly dread and terror. Arlen Specter might actually be a Wraith from Mordor and must be stopped!

Is he Specter of Pennsylvania....or Specter of Mordor

< /sarcasm?>

[Hildy]

THIS ELECTION WAS ABOUT NATIONAL SECURITY and if the religious right, which IS a minority of the Republican Party just can't stand that it is not in charge anymore. If this election was about overturning Roe v. Wade, you show me ONE time President Bush brought it up during the campaign.

[Robert Drobot]

What a great post!!!

Your work in this political exercise, has been stellar!!!

[Cedar]

"It is a lack of fundamental character to play the crony-ism of senate fraternity when actual unborn children's' lives are at stake. What Hatch, Frist, and others are doing is sleazy, downright sleazy and proof of moral failing."

Well said.

It looks like they are protecting themselves more than the lives of innocent babies.

There should be absolutely NO REASON for a pro-abortion man to sit in the Chairmanship of so important a Committee as the Judiciary.

[TexasTransplant]

Hey Hildy PUT A SOCK IN IT! we heard you the first fifty times.
I never once mentioned abortion.
Specter is a sniviling backstabbing arrogant 2 faced lying POS and does not deserve to seat himself at the head of the Judicial table.

Rant off

Now back to our regularly scheduled FR

[Hildy]

back at ya.

[Pyro7480]

From Merriam-Webster:

Specter (or Spectre): 2: something that haunts or perturbs the mind
Wraith: 1b: b : GHOST, SPECTER

I think you're on to something!