Dear JeffAtlanta,
A quick look reveals there are a number of vulnerable Dems as well as Republicans. And Dems are defending two more seats than Republicans (three, if you count Jeffords).
I think that there are three or four vulnerable Dems, even in nominally blue states. Conversely, the only really vulnerable Republican appears to be Santorum (PA).
But your argument can be played both ways.
We are truly unlikely to pick up any significant number of seats in 2006, and could lose seats. We need to strike while the iron is hot, while we have a majority.
The legitimate uses of political power are not merely to continue in power.
Sometimes, you have to actually use that power to achieve important ends.
"I believe that Specter is totally on the same page with this. He may be pro-life, but he is not opposed to strict constitutionalist. His only objection is to outwardly apparent pro-life judges."
I disagree. Nothing on the record shows that Mr. Specter favors strict constructionists on the court. His expansive pro-death views, his views on the rights of trial lawyers, his "Scottish" verdict in the impeachment trial, his pandering to the likes of George Soros, and of subjugating US law to an international court demonstrate that Mr. Specter doesn't actually give a wit about the US Constitution.
It is a mistake to let this POS become chairman of the Judiciary Committee. After having made the mistake of supporting Mr. Specter over Rep. Toomey, after being knifed in the back by the POS, I hope the president and the leadership don't make this next mistake. If they do, I hope it turns out for the best, and Mr. Specter is unable to harm any strict constructionist / pro-life nominees, especially for the Supreme Court.
But if Chief Justice Rehnquist goes and is replaced by someone who ultimately does not vote in favor of the Constitution, including to overturn Roe, then the White House and the Senate leadership will have lost fatally. A Rehnquist replacement could last 30 years.
They will have shown that they are incompetent to get the job done.
sitetest
I don't think I disagree with the overall strategy, in the sense that it might work.
In particular, I agree that the President should NOT just put judges up there on the claim that they're "pro-life". Bush campaigned on "Strict constructionists". We all know what that means, and it includes, but is not limited to, overturning Roe v. Wade, because Roe v. Wade is not defensible as a reasonable construction of the constitution.
Anyway, I think Bush, Cheney and the White House gang are pretty sophisticated folks, and wouldn't just send up a one-issue rube to be a lifetime Supreme or Appellate court justice.
That said, the President can't send up any avowed pro-choicers - Specter types - to the Supreme Court. "Strict Constructionist" may not equal "Pro-life". A strict constructionist may be utterly indifferent to unborn babies and think abortion is a good thing, but he cannot rationally defend Roe v. Wade on strict construction grounds.
But again, this is the world of hypotheticals. Bush isn't going to send up a pro-Roe appointee.
So, I can't disagree with you that playing down the pro-life litmus test is a bad idea. "Strict constructionist" means "pro-life", or at least "anti-Roe", for all practical purposes. If strict constructionists get up there and defend Roe, it will be a monumental betrayal not just of political allegiances, but of legal logic itself!
It does occur me that the doctrine of the lesser of two evils and the white lie might make it possible for a judge nominee to, nudge wink, say that he supports Roe on the basis of stare decisis, etc. (very O'Connor-like), get onto the court, and then change his mind. I'm not exactly advocating skulduggery, just noting that judges do sometimes change their minds when they get on the bench...
So, I can follow you all down the road and agree that, if this is the strategy, it's a reasonable approach, and it may be about all we can do.
But all that said, Specter has done damage here. He is the one who antagonized a core Republican constituency by flipping us off to our faces in the very moment of our victory. Your strategy requires a lot of "trust me" on our part, and the guy we have to trust is the guy who just told us on election day itself that he is going to oppose us. This does not inspire confidence at all.
I note that when Trent Lott said less inflammatory things at Thurmond's funeral, and the black coalition - who don't vote Republican anyway - was up in arms, the Republicans were quick to unceremoniously dump their own Senate Majority Leader. Here we've got one Senator publicly vowing to do the opposite of the platform, and giving the finger to a core Republican constituency, but we are asked to quietly sit down in the back of the bus.
We probably will, if we're forced to.
If the party rams this jerk down our throats and says "Trust us", we don't have much choice.
But a lot of us are going to be EXTREMELY unhappy about it, and the "trust me" card will have been played out. There's no more "trust me" in that deck if, as we feared - reasonably too, given Specter's record - the guy does block the (nudge-wink) strict constructionists from the bench. Or worse, if the President nominates anybody BUT strict constructionists.
And then there is the matter of the nuclear option.
Nominating judges doesn't do any good if they are all blocked by a rump of Democrats. And the leaders of the pro-life movement, at least, understand that nuclear option. We know that, if push comes to brutal shove, a Senate Majority can do exactly what LBJ did and force through a rules change to get judges a floor vote. It's not going to be good enough to shrug your shoulders and say "We tried. Filibuster rules, you know." Because we know that you CAN, in fact, get around the filibuster in a few ways, if you want to.
I don't know why the Republicans want to spend that "trust me" card on Arlen Specter. I do know that it is alarming to the pro-lifers. When I speak of that sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs that we have been turned into the Black Bloc chumps of the Republican Party, it is not a rhetorical device.
And when I say that the difference is that pro-lifers won't vote, over time, like the Black Bloc, but will pull out in disgust if they are told forever that they cannot have anything that they want on pro-life because "it's not the time", I am not threatening something ominous. I am matter-of-factly describing the pro-life people that I know.
I'd ask you to look at it from a different perspective. When has the Catholic Church in America EVER stuck its neck out in an American election? Never before. This time, the word came down from Rome itself that bound Catholics to vote for pro-life candidates where there was a choice. That is pretty serious stuff. Now, I recall Republicans arguing even more aggressively, that the Church should deny Kerry Communion, and make a public spectacle out of highlighting his pro-choice stance and its incompatibility with Catholicism. So, when it suited their election purposes, Republican operatives were willing to urge the Catholic Church to intervene even more aggressively in the political process.
But then on election day, one idiot Senator shoots off his mouth, and now the whole pro-life movement, including, presumably, the authorities of the Catholic Church, are expected to be quiet as churchmice and accept the march of procedure and precedent. You don't engage a sophisticated and careful organization like the Catholic Church and then expect it to go away a day later. Catholics voted for Republicans, this time, for the first time, in unprecedented numbers because the Catholic Church essentially told them to...without ever saying it. Republicans don't believe that they picked up 44% of the Latino vote all of a sudden because Hispanics suddenly became free-marketeers, do they? This was the Catholic Church.
Specter getting on that committee is a slap at pro-lifers. No amount of shucking and jiving will change that fact. Whether it's a mortal slap or not depends on what happens when candidates come up, but that slap could be avoided if Specter is denied the chair. Let Hatch keep it for a couple of years. There are many options, and the Republican party has the power to use them. It did not long ago to toss out a Senate Majority Leader, and Specter's not as important as Lott was.
The Catholic Church stuck its neck out, and moved a substantial number of Catholics' voting patterns from the traditional social welfare focus of Catholics. It made a major difference in this election. If the Republican Party does not deliver on that, the Church is not going to risk alienating its own parishoners to stick its neck out again. The Church took a real risk. The Republicans cannot play it safe and hope for the best. They have to meet the people who worked for them halfway.
And the easy way to do that is to bork Specter, and save the "trust me" card for another, better cause than him.