Please read this article--to the end. Santorum voted for Arlen Specter and actively campaigned for him—AGAINST Pro-Life conservative Pat Toomey.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1273280/posts
The Pennsylvania Treason (Arlen Specter)
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Posted: May 1, 2004 | By Mark Crutcher
Posted on Saturday, November 06, 2004 11:45:55 PM by vannrox
I have often asserted that, for the pro-life movement, the only practical distinction between the Democrat and Republican parties is that one is an enemy who will stab us in the chest and the other is a friend who will stab us in the back.
Tuesday’s Republican primary in Pennsylvania proved my point. Hard-core abortion enthusiast Republican Arlen Specter was being challenged by pro-lifer Pat Toomey for the U.S. Senate. As the incumbent, Specter was predicted to win easily. But as Election Day approached, the polls clearly showed that Toomey was closing in fast and had a legitimate shot to pull off an upset.
That’s when the GOP’s power brokers pulled out the heavy guns. President George W. Bush personally rushed to Pennsylvania and implored Republicans to get behind the candidacy of ... Arlen Specter. Equally amazing, Pennsylvania’s other senator, Rick Santorum, also chose to walk away from his long-espoused pro-life principles. He joined Bush on the campaign trail and urged voters to defeat the pro-life challenger.
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.
One of the things that made this particular election so crucial for the pro-life movement is that, if re-elected, Specter’s seniority will give him the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Pro-lifers often say that we must support the Republicans and George Bush because of Supreme Court appointments. However, that is now a dead issue given that no pro-life nominee to the Supreme Court is going to get past Specter.
If George Bush didn’t know this when he used his influence to get Specter re-elected, then he really is as stupid as the Democrats say he is.
But of course, Bush is not stupid. He knew that by insuring Specter’s victory he was ending any chance of putting a pro-lifer on the Supreme Court. That may not have been his goal; it was simply the price he was willing to pay to support an incumbent Republican.
Moreover, Specter’s term is six years, which means that even if Bush wins in November, Specter will be in place for Bush’s entire second term and beyond. With that reality in place, the practical difference between who John Kerry might get confirmed to the Supreme Court and who Bush might get confirmed becomes zero.
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?
Second, from a pro-life perspective, who cares if the Democrats win if the alternative is a pro-abortion Republican? Are we supposed to believe that the unborn are better off with their fate is in the hands of pro-abortion Republicans than pro-abortion Democrats?
Third, what happened to principle? Regardless of political considerations, if Bush and Santorum were more than just rhetorically committed to the pro-life cause they would have never come to the aid of a pro-abortion candidate who was about to lose to a pro-life one. In fact, when they saw that Toomey actually had a chance, their response should have been to do what they could to secure the victory not work against it.
While we’re on the subject of principle, there are going to be those who try to dismiss what these two did by regurgitating that old chin drivel about abortion being just one issue, and the GOP has to look at “other issues” as well. It’s the same old worn-out “no litmus test” nonsense that we hear ad nauseam.
I’m always curious about this particular argument. I wonder whether the people who make it are willing to apply it across the board, or if it’s just a convenient way to dodge the abortion issue. For example, if it were discovered that Specter was secretly a member of the Ku Klux Klan, would that be a litmus test? Would Bush and Santorum still campaign for him saying that they disagreed with him on this one issue but that they have to look at all these “other issues” as well?
I think not, and that points out the abysmal dishonesty of what they did in Pennsylvania. If a Republican candidate was a Klansman who openly espoused racism, neither of these guys would be caught in the same county with him. You can also bet that this Klansman’s position on “other issues” would never even come up.
So despite all their beautiful rhetoric about the humanity of the unborn child, the fact that they will also work to elect politicians who say unborn children should be legally butchered by the millions speaks much louder. Their message is that when the subject is racism nothing else matters, but when the subject is baby killing there are “other issues” to consider. If you believe those are the actions of people who are truly committed to the pro-life cause, then you are in desperate need of a reality check.
In the final analysis, the Bush/Santorum betrayal was obviously the result of party politics. These guys sold the unborn down the river for political reasons, and they felt comfortable doing so primarily because the pro-life movement has always let them get away with it. For 30 years we have shown the Republican Party that whatever they do we’ll stick with them, and as long as we keep sending that message we are fools to think they will ever change.
That is the bottom line, and while the American pro-life establishment is so enamored with having a seat at the Republican table that they will never say this, I will:
Through their participation in The Pennsylvania Treason, the Republican Party, George Bush and Rick Santorum have lost the right to ever again ask for the support of pro-lifers.
By the way, in a speech he gave to a Catholic prayer breakfast less than a week after the election, Rick Santorum told the audience that they should “... get closer to God to hear what He wants done ... God speaks in whispers and you will not know His will unless you are close (to Him). He is calling, let me assure you, He is calling.”
Apparently, Santorum believes that God called him to work for baby killers.
I’m skeptical.
Mark Crutcher is president of Life Dynamics Incorporated of Denton, Texas.
Nonetheless, I respectfully respond to your #18 by saying that whatever the argument that Mark Crutcher may be making on this is a losing argument. I cannot condone any more than you do Rick Santorum's support for Arlen Specter over Toomey for the GOP Senate nomination but that is hardly the whole story. What follows is some of the rest of the story:
1. The perfect is the enemy of the good. We should eagerly hope for perfection without expecting it. The last Guy Who was perfect was crucified for his efforts and that was a looooong time ago. We don't expect to see His like again until the end when He returns in triumph. Rick Santorum never pretended to be perfect. Neither do I and I'll bet you don't either.
2. Toomey claimed to be pro-life when he ran in 2004 but he was elected to Congress as a pro-abort. He then claimed to have changed his mind on abortion after the birth of his first child. I'll take that but he conveniently announced this for the first time during the GOP Senate primary.
3. While Arlen Specter is no pro-lifer (and never clamed to be) and is not even vaguely acceptable as a candidate as a Republican or as a Demonrat (his original party and and the one far more congenial to his voting record), Santorum's support (as a fellow Pennsylvania Senator and a ranking GOP Senate caucus leader) for Specter was not justified but it was the only mistake on his generally and powerfully pro-life record.
4. Crutcher cannot accurately say that Specter "has always been viciously hostile toward anything the pro-life movement does..." Does the name Clarence Thomas ring a bell for Mr. Crutcher??? Arlen Specter was given the job of utterly demolishing Anita Hill and her lies about Thomas. Few here are aware of Specter's capabilities as a trial lawyer and cross-examiner. He left her bullet-ridden corpse in the gutter that she have emerged from. Maybe a probable 35-40 year tenure of Clarence Thomas holding the old Thurgood Marshall seat doesn't mean much to Mark Crutcher but I dissent from his view and note that the conversion of that seat on the life issues (and many others) was one of our most crucial victories in my lifetime.
5. Orrin Hatch came to Connecticut in 1988 to scold those of us who were busily removing Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., from the US Senate. Goldwater (a reprehensible excuse for a human being but admired by "fiscal conservatives") showed up to do likewise and so did other conservative senators. Personally, I despise Lowell Weicker as much or more than I despise Comrade Obonzo. Crutcher probably would not urge anyone to vote for a Goldwater (whose first wife was on Planned Barrenhood's National Board of Directors for 35 years until her death). GHWB's mother (W's grandmother) served about as long on the PP Board and was furious with her son and grandson for abandoning her baby-killing principles. I happen to think that Dubya was sincere and GHWB turned because in the old formula: Paris is worth a Mass. None of these guys is perfect any more than we are (OK, OK, Weicker is perfectly evil but that is not the perfection we are talking about). I have little doubt that Crutcher would not treat Hatch, however, as he treated Santorum.
6. Did Specter vote for Chief Justice Roberts and/or Justice Alito? To tell the truth, I have forgotten but I would be really surprised if he opposed both.
7. Apparently, former Congressman Toomey has been consistently, although somewhat quietly, pro-life since his 2004 campaign. That is good and we should make room for the converted but let's not pretend he was always pro-life. He was not.
8. Crutcher was writing on primary day, 2004, at what was presumably the high point in his frustrated anger over yet another pro-abort vs. pro-abort senatorial contest. People who want to be taken seriously in matters political need to reign in their emotions and go on to fight another day.
9. Well, the Crutchers and other perfectionists got their way and Santorum was defeated by that two-faced liar Casey. We sure taught US a lesson. Was that some sort of pro-life progress??? BTW, Casey was one of only seven Demonrat Senators (along with Leahy, Sanders, Durbin, Burris, Whitehouse and one other). DeWine was defeated in Ohio by Sharrod Brown, more real pro-life progress, huh? Again, we sure taught US a lesson.
10. Rick Santorum, as a US Senator, said he was pro-life and, as a Senator, he voted pro-life. He should not have campaigned for or voted for Specter in the primary. That deviation does not erase many years of Santorum's consistent pro-life voting record of decades in the House and Senate and in private life.
11. It may not mean much to Crutcher (who I believe is not Catholic but Santorum's public smackdown of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops at a Catholic Church Mid-Atlantic conference of Catholic laity for pleading for Congressional funding for a witch's brew of pro-abort "progressive" groups, kicking the leftist hierarchs as their numbers were seriously eroding and as Rome was systematically replacing those dying and retiring with substantially more conservative bishops, was a more important effort with more important results than most anything else that public officials do.
12. Mark Crutcher would do well to return to his area of competence which is instigating and assisting malpractice suits against the medical babykillers and leave matters political to those far more competent in that area than he.