Nine years ago this week, Arlen Specter, following in the footsteps of other wishful-thinking senators such as Vance Hartke, Fred Harris, Fritz Hollings, and Larry Pressler, announced that he–moderate, sensible, tolerant–was going to save the Republican party, the country, the free world, and, most importantly, the right to abortion, by entering the presidential race.
Surely you haven’t forgotten “Arlen Specter ‘96″?! But in case you have, it had much to do with countering the social conservative agenda, and specifically the GOP’s right-to-life stand. Specter’s speech announcing his candidacy was marked by repeated references to abortion–an issue that now may dog him and his increasingly tough primary battle with conservative Congressman Pat Toomey.
As his hat was floating into the presidential ring, Specter again and again trumpeted his determination to protect abortion rights, vowing to “champion tolerance and freedom, including a woman’s right to choose,” promising to “get government … out of the bedroom,” and pledging to “lead the fight to strip the strident anti-choice language from the Republican National platform.”
Fast forward to 2004. With Toomey closing the gap as their April 27th contest nears (polls show Specter’s one-time sizeable lead is down to single digits), that same hard-core supporter of abortion rights and federal funding for abortion is reaching out to, of all people, pro-lifers, in the hopes that they might save his chestnuts from primary fire.
Specter’s game plan is simple: confuse a votership that, hopefully, won’t give more than a cursory glance at the issue and his voting record, throw a political bone their way, project your problem onto your foe, and pray.
On abortion, Specter’s scheme has several components. One is legislative–in particular his recent votes to pass a Partial Birth Abortion ban and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (also known as “Laci and Conner’s Law”–after Laci and Conner Peterson–this fetal-homicide proposal, opposed by abortion-rights groups, codifies the doctrine that there are two victims when a woman and her unborn child are injured or killed during a federal crime).
In ads run on Christian radio stations–which are far off the radar screen of Pennsylvania’s media–Specter touts these sop votes to hopefully unsuspecting pro-lifers. But what he’s not telling his Christian-radio-listening constituents is about those other votes he cast that would have aborted the pro-life bills for which he ended up backing.
Specter is hoping no one will notice the man behind the curtain.
Take Laci and Conner’s Law, which, despite winning final passage by a comfortable 61-38 margin, was nearly scuttled by Senator Dianne Feinstein’s amendment that would have limited the victim status to just the mother–the murder of an unborn child would count as no crime. The proviso lost by a single vote. Yes, Arlen Specter voted for Feinstein’s killer amendment.
Both the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation and the National Right to Life Committee have excoriated Specter for his Feinstein vote, with NRLC legislative director Douglas Johnson blasting him for backing the final bill “only after he narrowly failed to kill it by voting for an amendment to say that unborn babies are never really crime victim When a criminal attacks a woman who carries an unborn child, he claims two victims–but Senator Specter voted that the law should say there is only one victim.”
Likewise on the partial-birth-abortion ban, Specter also voted for Senator Tom Harkin’s amendment to the bill that upheld the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing abortion on demand in America.
Another component of Specter’s unorthodox wooing of pro-lifers is to blacken Toomey’s credentials. The chutzpah is there for all to see on the Specter campaign website, which runs an article “Arlen’s Foe Two-Faced on Abortion,” claiming claims Pat Toomey isn’t truly a pro-lifer.
The fact is, Pat Toomey wasn’t a Henry Hyde clone when he was elected to Congress in 1998. But since then, according to his campaign spokesman, Mark Dion, Toomey and his wife have had two children, which has completely changed his stand on the life issues. “Even when he was first elected he had a 90 percent pro-life voting record,” says Dion. “He has adopted a consistent view on the sanctity of human life.”
There’s nothing wishy-washy about Toomey’s position. His campaign website is unequivocal: “Congressman Pat Toomey believes that the most fundamental responsibility of government is to defend and protect innocent human life–including the lives of unborn children. Pat Toomey is pro-life and as a United States Senator, he will continue to support pro-life legislation.” All of which has led the National Right to Life Committee and the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation to strongly endorse him in the primary and–assuming he wins that–in the general election against Democrat Congressman Joseph Hoeffel.
As for Specter’s low blows and have-it-both-ways gymnastics, seasoned Capitol Hill watchers know it well–it’s a trademark Specter tactic since he was first elected in 1980. The 1988 edition of The Almanac of American Politics had the Pennsylvania lawmaker pegged:
In general, Specter sees himself as a kind of bridge between the parties. But his usefulness in that role is limited by the general perception … that he is a master of the cheap shot. He flip-flops on issues like South Africa sanctions. Active, energetic, sometimes frenetic, Specter leaves no locally crucial issue unmined for votes.
Not even on abortion now, or even then. A precursor to Specter’s current wooing of voters out-of-sync with his position on the issue came in 1986, when he faced a reelection challenge from pro-abortion Democrat Congressman Bob Edgar.
Looking for unlikely votes, Specter courted pro-lifers–who had no real horse in the race–by talking up The Silent Scream, a then much-publicized and controversial movie of an actual abortion (it showed the fetus responding in apparent pain to the “procedure”).
Two weeks before the election, Specter, in an interview with a TV station in heavily Catholic Scranton, said the movie “should be shown to every woman who’s thinking of having an abortion.” NOW and NARAL harpies erupted in outrage and blasted Specter, but the moxie vote-grabber repeated the pitch days later to the Philadelphia Daily News, saying “someone considering an abortion should look at Silent Scream.”
Everything old is new again. Which is why pro-lifers voting in the Pennsylvania primary on April 27 should take a hard look at Arlen Specter’s real record, and see through his latest silent scheme to have it both ways on the abortion issue.
–Jack Fowler is associate publisher of National Review.