The ongoing fight over Arlen Specter’s Senate Judiciary Committee fate seems to have made one thing clear: Bush will win either way.
Yesterday, the five-term incumbent acted like a man prepared for a job interview.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., wants to make his case to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee directly to the panel’s GOP members next week.
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Specter, who is an abortion rights moderate, has been calling and meeting with senators individually to assure them he wouldn’t personally block Bush nominees from being voted on by the full Senate. The senator now wants to go in front of the GOP’s Judiciary Committee members and hash things out next week in a private meeting, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a committee member.
Cornyn, in particular, said he’d support Specter for the chairman slot if he issued a public statement saying he would not try to block a Supreme Court nominee who opposes abortion rights.
In other words, Specter has screwed himself in two equally important ways. He put his chairmanship at risk by “warning” the president about extremist judicial nominees, while putting his beliefs at risk while fighting to get the job that he was slated to have anyway. Cornyn’s request is effectively a request to have Specter sign away his conscience — and Specter will probably do so gladly.
From the White House’s perspective, Bush will have a conservative Judiciary Committee chairman (Kyl?) who will do anything the president wants, or he’ll have a moderate chairman who’ll be afraid to look askance at anything Bush requests. The result is the same in either case.
Think about the circumstances if Specter had just kept his mouth shut last Wednesday. He’d be chairman and would maintain the ability to vote against judicial nominees he found unacceptable. Instead, he’s running around Capitol Hill swearing that he’ll be rigidly behind every Bush nominee that comes down the pike and writing op-eds bragging about kind words from TV preacher Pat Robertson.
Specter, in other words, is voluntarily neutering himself. Even if he becomes chairman, he’ll have already promised to serve as a rubber stamp the White House’s agenda. The gavel might as well be in Karl Rove’s hand. The final showdown on Specter isn’t until January, but Bush has already won the fight.
In related news, Planned Parenthood has issued an alert to its membership offering Specter the organization’s support. Isn’t this the kind of “help” Specter doesn’t want at this point?