“I’m here to say it as plainly as I can: Arlen Specter is the
right man for the United States Senate,” George W. Bush said at the
rally in Pittsburgh on Monday. He explained that Specter might be
“a little bit independent-minded sometimes” but, à
la Seinfeld, there is “nothing wrong with that.” Later that
evening, the president helped the senator raise over $400,000.
Many conservatives agree that Specter is just a “little bit
independent-minded,” though they might not be as nonchalant as the
commander-in-chief about this. Specter is the man, after all, who
enthusiastically supports taxpayer funding of abortions and voted
against the Partial Birth Abortion Ban; who’s against tort reform
and school choice; who supports racial quotas, who helped invent
the verb to Bork, who voted “yea” on certifiable pinko
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and who, as the presumptive heir to the chair
of the Senate Judiciary Committee, threatens to toss any
traditional jurists.
His record only gets better. Specter fought Bush’s tax cuts
tooth and nail; has a lifetime love affair with labor unions; and
was the only Republican senator to vote for a bill allowing the
International Criminal Court to try American soldiers — an attack
on our sovereignty so heinous even John F. Kerry voted against
it.
Robert Novak noted in his syndicated column this week that Specter’s independence
has drawn the support of a lot of unusual donors to a Republican
campaign. Contributions over the years have come from George Soros,
Harold Ickes, 9/11 Commission inquisitioner Richard Ben-Veniste,
and Alan Dershowitz. Teresa Heinz Kerry, then sans the “Kerry,”
also was a proud Specter supporter in 1992, donating money and time
to his campaign, and cutting a commercial for him.
When Specter was recently asked what he thought Heinz Kerry
would say if someone asked her, “What do you think about Arlen
Specter?” Specter replied, “I think she’d say, ‘He’s been a very
good senator. I like him.’” Ugh.
FELLOW PENNSYLVANIA SENATOR Rick Santorum has slavishly praised
Specter in a television spot. Santorum also sent his own staff to
buoy Specter’s team in the field, and has told everyone within
earshot that the primary challenger, Rep. Pat Toomey, is “too
conservative for Pennsylvania.”
That’s right, Rick Santorum, the man who raised a firestorm last
year comparing consensual gay sex to “bigamy,” “polygamy,” and
“incest,” has determined that Toomey, a man whose positions are
very similar to his own, is just too far right. Meanwhile,
Santorum’s new centrist pal Specter recently attended an event put
on by OutFront, an organization that runs a PAC to elect pro-gay
candidates.
But even Santorum and Bush’s strong last-minute push might not
be enough to save the shaken Specter. Toomey continues to surge,
despite a serious cash disadvantage. The latest polls put the race
within the margin of error, with six days of campaigning to go.
Toomey recently told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that
the current “center-right coalition” in American politics had been
a long time coming. “And it’s a big deal. It’s a big deal whether
we seize this chance and actually advance the cause that we say we
believe in — limited government, lower taxes, less government
spending, the free-enterprise system, and personal freedom and
personal responsibility and traditional values — that set of
ideals that brought us together as a party.”
The national party expects Pennsylvania conservatives to pull
the lever for Specter purely on the grounds that Toomey
might lose in the general election. But that’s a weak
sales pitch, at best, and right now it’s a buyers’ market.
