{"id":5701,"date":"2005-11-01T09:41:35","date_gmt":"2005-11-01T14:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5701"},"modified":"2005-11-01T09:41:35","modified_gmt":"2005-11-01T14:41:35","slug":"so-much-for-specter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/so-much-for-specter\/","title":{"rendered":"So much for Specter"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Harriet Miers’ nomination was falling apart, Arlen Specter seemed annoyed. He was clearly irritated by Miers’ inability<\/a> to deal with his question about privacy rights; he didn’t like the fact that the White House gave James Dobson<\/a> more information than it did the Senate; and Specter just didn’t seem happy in general with Miers’ lack of qualifications.<\/p>\n

With Miers’ departure, there was speculation that Specter may be a key ally for Dems once a new nominee was announced. After all, shortly after last year’s election, Specter publicly encouraged the White House to avoid any Supreme Court nominees who would overturn Roe v Wade. For a few weeks, the right made his life miserable<\/a>, and Specter has a reputation as one who holds a grudge.<\/p>\n

Given this, Alito’s nomination offers Specter a rare opportunity. As Atrios noted<\/a> yesterday, Specter has been “milking” the “moderate pro-choice Republican thing” throughout his career. Alito gives Specter a chance to show some backbone and stand for his allegedly centrist principles.<\/p>\n

Will Specter seize the opportunity? Not so much<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said after meeting with Judge Alito for more than an hour on Monday that the judge’s dissent in the Planned Parenthood case was a “very narrow ruling” that did not signify dissent with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion.<\/p>\n

Mr. Specter, a strong supporter of abortion rights, also said Judge Alito had told him that he recognized a right to privacy in the Constitution, a crucial underpinning of Roe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alito told Specter he had nothing to worry about, causing Specter to effectively say, “He sounds good to me!”<\/p>\n

Specter even sent word<\/a> to the Gang of 14 — of which he is not a member — that Alito “hardly measures up to the standard the Gang of 14 had of extraordinary circumstances.”<\/p>\n

In other words, if there was any hope that Specter might be at all helpful, it’s gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Harriet Miers’ nomination was falling apart, Arlen Specter seemed annoyed. He was clearly irritated by Miers’ inability to deal with his question about privacy rights; he didn’t like the fact that the White House gave James Dobson more information than it did the Senate; and Specter just didn’t seem happy in general with Miers’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5701","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}