The muzzling of Arlen Specter
A Times EditorialPublished November 23, 2004
Threatened with the loss of a chairmanship that tradition dictated would be his with little question, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., had to trade any semblance of independence for assurance from GOP conservatives that they wouldn't derail his ascent to head the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Specter sealed the deal with a statement that came perilously close to promising a rubber stamp for any judicial nominee or initiative put forward by President Bush. "I have no reason to believe that I'll be unable to support any individual the president finds worthy," he said. He also promised to fight Democratic filibusters, and he said he wouldn't keep any legislation or constitutional amendment in committee, "even one which I personally opposed."
Certainly, Specter has only himself to blame for his current woes, kicked off by the remark at a Nov. 3 press conference that a strongly antiabortion Supreme Court nominee would have trouble getting past the Judiciary Committee. He has since said he was talking about Democratic filibusters, but conservative activists used the comment to accuse Specter of foreshadowing opposition to an antiabortion nominee. A senator with 24 years experience should have known better than to step on that rhetorical land mine.
Now Specter has become a tattered example of what can happen to any Republican member of Congress who dares to cross a core GOP constituency. Battered by protests from evangelicals and hard-line GOP conservatives, the lawmaker who once stood against the confirmation of conservative Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork has all but promised to keep his opinions to himself from now on.
Handing the president a blank check on judicial matters while helping obliterate the notion of moderation in the Republican Party, Specter has made bipartisanship much tougher. He also has reduced any flexibility he and his committee might have had in dealing with any ideologically extreme court nominees. The muzzling of Specter will compromise the Senate's constitutional role in scrutinizing presidential nominees. In the long run, it also could damage Republican efforts to become a more broad-based party.