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Conservatives build up campaign against Specter

The Pennsylvania senator is in line to become chairman of the Judiciary Committee

WASHINGTON - Religious activists gathered near the U.S. Supreme Court, then rallied and prayed outside the office of the Senate majority leader. Republican leaders huddled behind closed doors, weighing tradition against indignation.

And Sen. Arlen Specter, his routine appointment to one of the Senate's most coveted posts now in jeopardy, pledged allegiance to conservative principles as he pleaded for his job.

While Specter, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania, met with Senate leaders Tuesday to make his case for leading the Senate Judiciary Committee, religious conservatives ratcheted up their campaign against him, contending his appointment would jeopardize their best chance in 30 years to overturn Roe vs. Wade and rescue the federal courts from judges who make social policy.

Specter is in line to become the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the gatekeeper for presidential appointments to the federal bench, from the district level to the U.S. Supreme Court.

His appointment was thrown in doubt Nov. 3, when he warned the president against nominating justices who would outlaw abortion, suggesting they would not clear the Senate.

Conservatives, energized after evangelical Christians helped ensure President Bush's re-election and delivered Republican gains in the House and the Senate, were incensed. They have long loathed Specter, who supports abortion rights, and his comments gave them an opening to oppose his chairmanship.

Appointing Specter would be a "a betrayal and a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who helped" deliver the Republican gains, the Rev. Pat Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, said at a rally Tuesday outside the offices of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

The last time a senator was passed over for a committee chairmanship was 1914, after he suffered a stroke.

It appears unlikely Republicans in the Senate, where seniority is sacrosanct, would deny Specter the post.

Late Tuesday, after Specter met with the other Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, outgoing Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he thought Specter would get the job. But the tempest signaled that evangelical groups plan to go to great lengths to push what they describe as their newfound political power.

"If (Republicans) want to keep that coalition on their side, they need to to listen to what is said today," Rob Schenk, director of the conservative National Clergy Council, said at Tuesday's rally.

Frist is widely considered a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination and appointing Specter "would be a terrible burden for Sen. Frist to carry with him into the future," Schenk warned.

Specter, 74, says his Nov. 3 comments were misconstrued and that he merely had stated a political reality: Senate Democrats have blocked 10 conservative appointees to U.S. appeals courts, and nominating a Supreme Court justice likely to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion, would bring the president a fight he might not win.

Specter has pledged to support Bush's nominees and noted he supported all his nominees the past four years. He backed the appointments of two of the Supreme Court's most conservative members, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

But for many activists, the real fight is over the makeup of the federal judiciary at a time when conservatives feel both might and right are on their side.

Virtually every issue now driving the conservative agenda, from gay marriage to prayer in schools to abortion, stems from decisions made not by Congress, or by state legislatures, or by the president, but by the courts.

It was the Massachusetts high court that permited same-sex marriage last year. It was the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled it unconstitutional to prosecute a gay couple for sodomy. The courts excised prayer from the public schools, and federal courts repeatedly have struck down efforts to post the 10 Commandments and other scripture at courthouses, schools and city halls across the country.

Specter leans left of President Bush and the Republican base on many of these issues; for example, he opposed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. During the Reagan administration, he helped defeat Judge Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court, and many conservatives still despise him for that. In the 1980s, he helped kill the appointment of conservative Judge Jeff Sessions - now a Republican senator from Alabama and a member of the Judiciary Committee.

In the Pennsylvania Republican primary this fall, Specter narrowly defeated a bid by conservative U.S. Rep. Patrick Toomey to unseat him; some of the groups now campaigning against Specter's chairmanship, including the Concerned Women for America, worked to elect Toomey.

"You've got a Republican committee and Republican president, and . . . there should be some kind of harmony between them on getting the president's agenda through," said John S. Baker Jr., an expert in constitutional and criminal law at Louisiana State University who specializes in issues of federalism.

"Republicans do not want someone who's a Democrat with a Republican label effectively giving the committee chairmanship to the Democrats."

Republican senators and senators-elect are to meet privately this morning to choose their leaders. Republicans won't officially vote on committee chairmanships until the new Congress takes office in early January, but they could unofficially bless or doom Specter as early as this week.

If Specter were denied, it's unclear who would become chairman, but next in line is Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. The Republican caucus could vote to waive the rules and put Hatch back in charge.

But Frist has been conspicuously quiet. On Fox News Sunday, he called Specter's comments on abortion "disheartening" and said Specter had yet to make his case to be chairman.

The Republican Main Street Partnership, a coalition of moderate Republicans, including Specter, supports his appointment. Melissa Carlson, the group's spokeswoman, said that while much has been made of the influence of conservatives on Nov. 2, Republicans also made gains among Hispanics and married women, who tend to be less conservative.

The party must consider moderates when it appoints judges and pushes legislation, and Specter is a good example, she said. "They're important to the party and they're important to maintaining our Republican majority, and that's something that . . . our members will be reminding the president."