A Specter is Haunting Republicans

November 18 2004
Counterbias.com
Steve Horowitz

The Christian right helped Bush win his first presidential election two weeks ago, and now they think they're owed. That's bad news for Arlen Specter, who was in line to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee until he suggested -- on the day after the election -- that Democrats might filibuster judicial nominees inclined to overturn Roe v. Wade.

"When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, who'd overturn Roe versus Wade, I think that is unlikely," Specter said. "And I have said that bluntly during the course of the campaign, that Roe versus Wade was inviolate."

Well, we all know how that the right is opposed to "activist judges" unless they're activist on their side. So the White House was said to be "infuriated" by the remarks, as they normally are when Americans exercise their free speech rights, and religious zealots immediately launched a campaign urging Senate Republican leaders to violate seniority protocol and deny Specter his chairmanship.

Outside the Capitol on Tuesday, while Specter was inside assuring Republican leaders that he's suitably extreme, protesters gathered to oppose his chairmanship. "It is a betrayal and a slap in the face to millions of pro-life Americans who helped re-elect this president," thundered Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition.
(Thank the Good Lord for them -- we all know how endangered Christians are in this country.)

It is a testament to the Talibanization of America that a Senator with only a 21 percent rating from the National
Abortion Rights Action League should be considered such a threat. It is also clear evidence of the Nazification of the Republican Party. There will be no dissent! No doubt regarding our leader's infallibility! And no reaching out to those whose views differ from ours! Sieg Heil!

Of course, if anyone should have known the shitstorm that was to rain down, it's Specter. In 1995, after announcing his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, he sent out a fundraising letter decrying the influence of Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan in his party. He said he was running because "I thought it was time that someone stood up to these extremists and return our party to its  traditional conservative principles."

"I don't think the Republican Party should be blackmailed by any interest group," he says in the letter, precisely predicting the predicament he faces today. "I want the Republican Party to stand up for individual liberty and the right to choose. I want to limit government interference in our private lives.

"In other words, I want government out of our pockets and out of our bedrooms."

Now folks, I ask you -- what kind of Republican is that?