{"id":2988,"date":"2004-11-10T10:29:33","date_gmt":"2004-11-10T15:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2988.html"},"modified":"2004-11-10T10:29:33","modified_gmt":"2004-11-10T15:29:33","slug":"specter-still-struggling-against-right-wing-tide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/specter-still-struggling-against-right-wing-tide\/","title":{"rendered":"Specter still struggling against right-wing tide"},"content":{"rendered":"

The this-will-blow-over strategy isn’t working out for Arlen Specter. The GOP’s far-right base, emboldened by their role in the election, isn’t letting up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Conservative opposition to Sen. Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.) becoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee has mushroomed, to the dismay of Senate leaders who hoped it would fade, The Hill has learned.<\/p>\n

Many conservatives were outraged by Specter’s comments after being reelected to a fifth term last week, when he said it is unlikely that the Senate would confirm judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. <\/p>\n

Specter’s post-election statement that judicial nominees who oppose abortion rights may have a hard time getting confirmed has put Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Specter’s junior colleague, Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), in difficult positions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Presidential ambitions have a lot to do with this. Both Frist and Santorum are testing the waters for 2008 White House bids and don’t want to do anything to upset the party’s radical wing, which votes in droves in the primaries. If anything, last week’s results give the right a stronger hand than ever.<\/p>\n

Frist, Santorum and other Republicans reported that their telephones, fax machines and e-mail inboxes were jammed by protests from conservative activists who demanded that Specter not be allowed to succeed term-limited Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).<\/p>\n

“This is huge with the base. It’s mushrooming, and it’s not going away,” a GOP Senate aide said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact, The Hill reported<\/a> that 20 conservative groups are involved in the campaign to deny Specter the Judiciary Committee chairmanship. This, in other words, is not a side project of limited interest to the religious right.<\/p>\n

The Senate caucus doesn’t know what to do next.
\n
\nOn the one hand, no Republican senator has publicly turned on Specter. On the other, the GOP hasn’t “circled their wagons” to defend him, either.<\/p>\n

“I have not heard of any Republican senators coming to his defense yet, which is good news for us,” said Jayd Henricks, director of congressional relations for the Family Research Council, another conservative group hoping to oust Specter. “This is not a good thing for keeping party unity. They may be waiting to see if the storm dies down, but I don’t think the pressure’s going to let up, from our standpoint.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Specter is hardly sitting by, idly waiting for the uproar to die down. In today’s Wall Street Journal, for example, Specter had an op-ed<\/a> explaining his consistent support of most of the infamous right-wing judges (Scalia, Thomas) and all of Bush’s judicial nominees. Specter’s essay, however, is just a rehash of his previous arguments and seems to have done nothing to impress his critics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All of this comes at an uncomfortable point for the GOP in the post-election wake. Bush is paying lip-service to bringing people together, while the right is demanding the head of a high-profile Republican senator. Party leaders are still trying to convince everyone that moderates are welcome in the GOP’s “big tent,” but as the DLC noted<\/a> yesterday, Republican activists are making it clear that centrists are welcome “only so long as they keep their mouths shut and follow orders about the most fervent goals of the cultural Right.”<\/p>\n

Republicans on the Judiciary Committee will vote on their chairman in January. Can the far right keep the pressure on until then? We’ll see, but I wouldn’t put it past them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The this-will-blow-over strategy isn’t working out for Arlen Specter. The GOP’s far-right base, emboldened by their role in the election, isn’t letting up. Conservative opposition to Sen. Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.) becoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee has mushroomed, to the dismay of Senate leaders who hoped it would fade, The Hill has learned. Many conservatives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}