Religious Groups Launch Two-Month Campaign to Remove Specter
Religious pro-family and pro-life groups rally in front of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to protest against Sen. Arlen Specter's ascension as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Religious groups rallied outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building yesterday to launch a two-month campaign protesting Sen. Arlen Specter’s ascension to chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Director of Christian Defense Coalition Rev. Patrick Mahoney, one of the principal organizers of the “pray-in” demonstration, said one of the things which went undetected under the national media radar was how much “judicial activism” motivated “the core base of the Republican Party, pro-life, pro-family, evangelicals, and conservative Catholics” to get out to the polls.
Mahoney said it was activist judges who were responsible for decriminalizing abortion, trying to remove the phrase ‘one nation under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance, ordering the state of Massachusetts to craft legislation to allow same-sex marriage, and overturning a ban on Partial Birth Abortion.
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“We realize a critical issue of this election is who will control, who put men and women on the federal bench and most importantly on the Supreme Court bench,” said Mahoney, who noted that Chief Justice William Rehnquist will not likely return to the U.S. Supreme Court bench until January and there would likely be as many as three vacancies in the Supreme Court in the next four years.
He said the groups did not make the sacrifice of “countless hours of campaigning…to wake up on Nov. 3 and realize that Arlen Specter may be the next chairperson of the Senate Judiciary.”
Mahoney was among the group of 20 protestors/speakers who gathered to oppose Specter’s chairmanship to the Senate Judiciary, the Committee that determines which judicial nominees go to the floor for a vote. Specter is next in line to assume the Judiciary post due to Senate rules of seniority.
Specter set off a furor among fellow Republicans and conservatives after he suggested in a Nov. 3 news conference that the President’s pro-life judicial nominees would not get approval from the Senate.
“The president is well aware of what happened, when a number of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster," Specter said then. "And I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning."
He has since appeared on T.V. shows and reassured Republican committee members and Senate leaders that he has never applied a “litmus test” on any judicial nominees and have supported the President’s judicial nominees in the past. On Tuesday, Specter attended a closed-door meeting with the Republican committee members to make his case for chairmanship.
"I expect him to have the support of the committee," said the panel’s current chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who is stepping down due to Senate-imposed six-year term limits.
"Nobody in the meeting was against Arlen," Hatch said with Specter at his side. "Senator Specter handled himself very well and frankly, I'm for him, as I should be."
Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America, said there many other good choices for Judiciary chairmanship and that the Republican Conference Rules do not require them to adhere to seniority when selecting the Committee chairman.
“It’s far more important to get it right than to adhere to tradition,” LaRue said at the rally.
“The President wants judges who respect the text of the Constitution and their limited rule as judges,” she said. “Arlen Specter wants judges who share his views that the Constitution is living and growing –which sounds more like he is describing a fungus than the highest law of the land.”
LaRue said Specter could not be trusted in representing the interests of the President. While the President is opposed to abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and same-sex marriage, Specter supports all these, according to LaRue.
"Give us Jon Kyl, give us Jeff Sessions, give us John Cornyn," she said. "Give us any true 'red' Republican -- but don't give us Arlen Specter."
Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council charged Specter for using "the unprecedented success of this president and of his fellow Republicans in the last election" to claim the chair while rejecting the party’s platform.
Mahoney said the campaign to remove Specter would continue until the vote in January regardless of what conversations take place between Specter and Senate leaders because it will be the new Republican majority who will have the final say.
“If Sen. Specter becomes head of the Senate Judiciary, it is a betrayal and a slap in the face to millions to pro-life Americans who worked to re-elect this President and get a 55 majority in the Senate,” said Mahoney.
