OR: Is Arlen Specter Really Too Liberal?
Arlen Specter, Chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee, is a Republican from Pennsylvania where he has served as a conservative representative for over 20 years. Specter is generally considered to be fiscally conservative and has fought against government expenditure for such programs as healthcare for many years. Democrats are said to see him as less moderate than many in the Senate but someone who can be reasoned with on matters of substance. But Specter has "pro-choice" stamped on his forehead in a time when as many as 4 Supreme Court justices may be chosen and the neocons see him as a block to the neoconservative agenda of overturning Roe V. Wade and sending abortions back into alleys and brothels.
Specter has supported Preseident Bush almost 100% of the time but sees his role on the Judicial Committee as a bond of honor to the country. He does not want to see abortion become a more divisive issue than it is now but sees the religious right as a threat to "strict constructionistism" because the agenda of religious leaders extends far beyond abortion.
What Specter did not anticipate is that the President he has supported and believes in would turn on him as being a traitor to Republican values by his stance on choice. Once again, the Bush administration shows itself to not be conservative in any appreciable way and indeed to be a radical group of people who used the Republican Party to gain power and then fights within the party to move the it to their radical position.
The Democratic Party is often accused of being a concensus of 20 separate interest groups and certainly the commonality (the big tent approach) of the party is that supporting each other is better than letting the opposition steal the agenda. The re-election of Mr. Bush has shown the concensus to have failed to do this. Indeed, the Bush administration believes it has a mandate to change tax laws, social security, and how justice is done in the U.S. If the Democrats are going to gain any chance to make input in these issues then it is going to need at least a sympathetic ear to listen.
If you would have suggested before now that Arlen Specter would have such an ear before now I think that few would have agreed. However, I think Senator Specter is going to find out how far away his party has moved from his values and ideals. Senator Frist, the Majority Leader in the Senate, a potential candidate in 2008 is already looking away from Specter and considering alternatives to his chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee. Many others in the Senate are lining up against Specter, running scared from the monster in the White House who will stop at nothing to shape the United States in "his image."
This signals an even more important turn in the course of post-election America. It is a continuing revolution in the Republican "Party" that wil continue to adopt more and more of the leadership of the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons whom many even in conservative congregations see as extremists. But as "moderates" are pushed out of the way like Colin Powell and Arlen Specter the agenda of the neocons becomes a possibility. Deficit spending, more tax cuts, extremist justice and more burdens placed on the workers and the poor are just some of the future as the administration moves closer and closer to it's core philosophy.
Is this really what you wanted when you voted for Bush?