Here’s a story that pulls together a slew of questions we’ll be watching closely over the next weeks and months.
Remember that just after his reelection, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) suggested that President Bush should be cautious in nominating doctrinaire pro-life judges after he becomes Judiciary Committee Chair next year. Specter is outspokenly pro-choice.
Soon after, however, Specter was volubly protesting his fealty to the president and insisting he’d give the go-ahead to more or less anybody the president nominated to the bench.
Evidently, in the interim, Specter got a call letting him know that if he wanted the Judiciary Committee Chairmanship, he’d better recant. And quickly. And so he did.
At this point, to use judicial jargon, the White House had already forced Specter to enter into a non-custodial relationship with his testicles. But now the ante is being upped.
James Dobson, one of the most powerful leaders of the religious right, now says he doesn’t want Specter as Chairman no matter what. “He is a problem,” said Dobson, “and he must be derailed.”
I have a hard time believing that Specter will actually be turned aside while he is so loudly protesting his willingness to toe the party line. But it puts even more pressure on Specter to be a down-the-line supporter of every judicial nominee the president sends up to the Hill.
This raises two issues. First, how much room will remain for the moderate GOP senators and how much freedom will they have to deviate from the White House line which, predictably, is now moving even more decisively to the right. Second, how much de facto control will the White House and the president have over the internal governance of the senate under Bill Frist? Who chairs what committees? What rules get or don’t get changed, etc.?
