{"id":396,"date":"2003-07-10T13:40:14","date_gmt":"2003-07-10T18:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/396.html"},"modified":"2003-07-10T13:40:14","modified_gmt":"2003-07-10T18:40:14","slug":"pryor-vote-postponed-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/pryor-vote-postponed-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Pryor vote postponed — again"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Senate Judiciary Committee keeps scheduling a vote on Bill Pryor’s judicial nomination and then keeps delaying it. Today the committee agreed to push it off one more week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pryor’s biggest fan, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), said the delays have been caused by a busy schedule, not concerns over the nomination. “Nothing in the Senate runs on time,” Session said.<\/p>\n

That’s probably true, but Republicans must also be aware that a successful committee vote is not yet guaranteed. There are 19 members — 10 Republicans and 9 Dems — all of whom are expected to vote along party lines on a controversial nominee like Pryor.<\/p>\n

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) continues to be the wild card.
\n
\nAs recently as yesterday, Specter, generally moderate as contemporary Republicans go, said he was still “undecided” on Pryor’s nomination. Obviously, if Specter’s concerns lead him to vote with the Dems, Pryor goes away and won’t get a floor vote.<\/p>\n

Will Specter be willing to take the heat of putting conscience above party unity? I doubt it. <\/p>\n

Yes, Specter has had the courage to buck the GOP from time to time. He is, after all, pro-choice, he opposed Clinton’s impeachment, he supports hate crimes legislation, and he generally supports gay rights — positions which won’t win him any “Republican of the Year” competitions.<\/p>\n

In addition, I can’t help but wonder if Specter, who is Jewish, finds himself uncomfortable with Pryor’s religious fundamentalism and support for the religious right’s agenda on issues such as government endorsement of the Christian version of the Ten Commandments and state-sponsored prayer in public schools — issues where Pryor and Specter would certainly disagree.<\/p>\n

I suspect, though, that Specter will ultimately cave to party pressure. He’s up for re-election next year and a far-right House member — Pat Toomey — has announced he’ll challenge Specter in the Pennsylvania GOP primary next year. If Specter needs to shore up his support among the right-wing fringe, he may not be willing to risk their wrath by voting with the Dems, even if Pryor is a radical judicial nominee.<\/p>\n

The White House has promised to back Specter against Toomey’s challenge next year, which I suspect would make it even less likely that he’d reject one of Bush’s choices for the federal bench.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Senate Judiciary Committee keeps scheduling a vote on Bill Pryor’s judicial nomination and then keeps delaying it. Today the committee agreed to push it off one more week. Pryor’s biggest fan, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), said the delays have been caused by a busy schedule, not concerns over the nomination. “Nothing in the Senate […]<\/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-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","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=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}