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Specter Needs To Go
By Gregory J. Sullivan, For The Bulletin
“These tedious old fools!” — Hamlet
Senator Arlen Specter just will not go away. He will be running for another term in the Senate, though he will face a serious challenge in the Republican primary in May of 2010 from Pat Toomey. One certainty is that the media will refer to Mr. Specter invariably as a Republican “moderate,” and he will be depicted as something of an endangered species in an increasingly conservative party. However, on the central issue of our time — namely, abortion —he is of course anything but a moderate, and his efforts to guard the unfettered abortion license have been among the most effective of any political figure today.
The basic problem is that Mr. Specter is a Democrat in everything but name. His “moderate” policy positions often put him to the left of most Democrats. “The irony is that the very nature of his moderate politics leave him without a home,” according to Christopher Borick, a political scientist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. “He’s at a time in his career when he should be being embraced by his party as an elder statesman, but instead he’s being pushed aside. This gives his story an element of tragedy.” This view is sheer nonsense; that Mr. Specter is being pushed aside gives his story a sense of justice.
The decisive moment in the struggle over abortion was the nomination of Robert Bork by President Reagan to fill the seat on th e U.S. Supreme Court of Justice Lewis Powell in 1987. If successfully confirmed, Mr. Bork would have provided the necessary fifth vote to reverse the legal, political, and moral catastrophe of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that voided the laws of all fifty states on abortion and imposed a thoroughly permissive national standard on this issue. Facing the inevitable Democratic hostility in the Senate was not enough to defeat Mr. Bork’s nomination, but with a small group of Republicans led by Mr. Specter opposed Mr. Bork, the nomination was doomed.
Mr. Specter moved on to other political embarrassments, but Mr. Bork wrote the most astute book on constitutional law in our time, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (1990). In this work, he reflects on the calumnies he endured during his nomination war. Mr. Bork’s portrait of the obtuse Mr. Specter is memorably scathing:
“I spent almost seven hours all told with Sen. Specter, at the hearings and in his offices, discussing constitution al law, all of it at his request. To the end, he could not comprehend what I was saying about the first amendment, the equal protection clause, the need to construe the Constitution in the light of the original understanding, or the dangers of letting judges decide cases with no more authority or guidance than a phrase not in the Constitution, such as ‘fairness’ or ‘the needs of the nation.’ Because I was, out of necessity, patient with him, a lot of people not versed in constitutional law got the impression that this was a serious constitutional discussion.”
Eventually, Justice Anthony Kennedy was confirmed to this seat on the Court. And Kennedy notoriously switched his vote to support the extension of Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. Thus, the most lethal abortion-on-demand regime in the Western world was given life for another generation. Conservatives rightly remain furious with Mr. Specter’s disgraceful role in Mr. Bork’s defeat. Moreover, it must be emphasized that the demise of Mr. Bork’s nomination was not just a defeat on the abortion question. The Court would have provided Mr. Bork with the perfect opportunity to put into practice his originalist view of constitutional interpretation – an approach that he restored to intellectual respectability in response to the social-engineering depredations of the Warren Court. Instead, we have been stuck with the occasionally reasonable but more often pretentiously wrongheaded Kennedy.
“I’m at the top of my game,” Mr. Specter announced in a recent interview. Even allowing for typical political hyperbole, this view is comical in its mendacity. This aged (he is 79) and pompous senatorial Polonius deserves the forced retirement of a lost election, especially a loss in a primary. He has not served the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or the country well – in fact, he has served them very poorly, and the defeat of his extremism-cloaked-as-moderation ideology will be a gain for simple honesty and the common good.
Gregory J. Sullivan (Gregoryjsull@aol.com) is a lawyer who resides in Bucks County.
Senator Arlen Specter just will not go away. He will be running for another term in the Senate, though he will face a serious challenge in the Republican primary in May of 2010 from Pat Toomey. One certainty is that the media will refer to Mr. Specter invariably as a Republican “moderate,” and he will be depicted as something of an endangered species in an increasingly conservative party. However, on the central issue of our time — namely, abortion —he is of course anything but a moderate, and his efforts to guard the unfettered abortion license have been among the most effective of any political figure today.
The basic problem is that Mr. Specter is a Democrat in everything but name. His “moderate” policy positions often put him to the left of most Democrats. “The irony is that the very nature of his moderate politics leave him without a home,” according to Christopher Borick, a political scientist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. “He’s at a time in his career when he should be being embraced by his party as an elder statesman, but instead he’s being pushed aside. This gives his story an element of tragedy.” This view is sheer nonsense; that Mr. Specter is being pushed aside gives his story a sense of justice.
The decisive moment in the struggle over abortion was the nomination of Robert Bork by President Reagan to fill the seat on th e U.S. Supreme Court of Justice Lewis Powell in 1987. If successfully confirmed, Mr. Bork would have provided the necessary fifth vote to reverse the legal, political, and moral catastrophe of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that voided the laws of all fifty states on abortion and imposed a thoroughly permissive national standard on this issue. Facing the inevitable Democratic hostility in the Senate was not enough to defeat Mr. Bork’s nomination, but with a small group of Republicans led by Mr. Specter opposed Mr. Bork, the nomination was doomed.
Mr. Specter moved on to other political embarrassments, but Mr. Bork wrote the most astute book on constitutional law in our time, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (1990). In this work, he reflects on the calumnies he endured during his nomination war. Mr. Bork’s portrait of the obtuse Mr. Specter is memorably scathing:
“I spent almost seven hours all told with Sen. Specter, at the hearings and in his offices, discussing constitution al law, all of it at his request. To the end, he could not comprehend what I was saying about the first amendment, the equal protection clause, the need to construe the Constitution in the light of the original understanding, or the dangers of letting judges decide cases with no more authority or guidance than a phrase not in the Constitution, such as ‘fairness’ or ‘the needs of the nation.’ Because I was, out of necessity, patient with him, a lot of people not versed in constitutional law got the impression that this was a serious constitutional discussion.”
Eventually, Justice Anthony Kennedy was confirmed to this seat on the Court. And Kennedy notoriously switched his vote to support the extension of Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. Thus, the most lethal abortion-on-demand regime in the Western world was given life for another generation. Conservatives rightly remain furious with Mr. Specter’s disgraceful role in Mr. Bork’s defeat. Moreover, it must be emphasized that the demise of Mr. Bork’s nomination was not just a defeat on the abortion question. The Court would have provided Mr. Bork with the perfect opportunity to put into practice his originalist view of constitutional interpretation – an approach that he restored to intellectual respectability in response to the social-engineering depredations of the Warren Court. Instead, we have been stuck with the occasionally reasonable but more often pretentiously wrongheaded Kennedy.
“I’m at the top of my game,” Mr. Specter announced in a recent interview. Even allowing for typical political hyperbole, this view is comical in its mendacity. This aged (he is 79) and pompous senatorial Polonius deserves the forced retirement of a lost election, especially a loss in a primary. He has not served the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or the country well – in fact, he has served them very poorly, and the defeat of his extremism-cloaked-as-moderation ideology will be a gain for simple honesty and the common good.
Gregory J. Sullivan (Gregoryjsull@aol.com) is a lawyer who resides in Bucks County.
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