Specter Takes A Turn On The Spit

Sen. Arlen Specter gained ground Tuesday toward winning the Senate Judiciary Committee chairmanship, which was thrown into doubt after he said judges who oppose abortion rights would face confirmation problems.

"I expect him to have the support of the committee," the panel's current chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said after a closed-door meeting of its 10 Republican members.

The meeting came after a group of anti-abortion protesters held a "pray-in" outside the Capitol today.

Specter, a moderate Republican senator from Pennsylvania who just won election to his fifth term, sought the meeting after social conservatives opposed to abortion mounted a campaign to deny him the job of guiding possible Supreme Court nominees — as well as lower court nominees — to confirmation.

"Nobody in the meeting was against Arlen," Hatch told reporters, with Specter at his side. "Senator Specter handled himself very well and frankly, I'm for him, as I should be."

Despite picking up the crucial support Tuesday, Specter stopped short of declaring victory.

"No chickens have hatched, and I don't count any chickens until they're hatched," he said. "But with [Sen.] Hatch beside me, I'm a little less unconfident."

Hatch, who cannot keep the post because of Republican term limits on chairmanships, said he expects the matter to be fully resolved before the 109th Congress convenes in January. It moved in that direction Tuesday when even conservatives on the judiciary panel characterized their meeting with Specter as productive.

Outside the Capitol today, about 20 abortion opponents held a "pray-in" protesting the prospect of Specter's becoming the panel's chairman.

Specter, 74, stunned conservatives at a Nov. 3 postelection news conference when he said judicial nominees who would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case legalizing abortion, probably would be blocked by Democrats.

"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."

Anti-abortion conservatives on Tuesday protested the possible elevation of Sen. Arlen Specter to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman just as the Pennsylvania senator was trying to convince his Republican colleagues that he would be a strong advocate for President Bush's judicial nominees.

More than a dozen protesters gathered outside a Senate office building where Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., keeps his offices, carrying signs saying "Bork Specter", "Sen. Frist: Stop Judicial Activism" and "Senator Frist: Listen to We the People."

Robert Bork was a conservative jurist whose nomination to the Supreme Court was thwarted.

The thunder on the right was prompted by a post-election remark by the senator. Specter, who supports abortion rights, said Democratic filibusters would make it hard to secure the confirmation of anti-abortion court nominees.

"I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning," he said.

His remarks were widely interpreted as a warning to President Bush to refrain from selecting Supreme Court nominees who opposed abortion rights. The fact that Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is ailing from thyroid cancer, could step down from the court only intensified the reaction that followed.

Conservatives roundly denounced Specter's comments, and began calling for his head.

Specter's problems have been deepened by the fact that Mr. Bush and Senate Republican leaders haven't exactly thrown their bodies over the hand grenades being rolled in the senator's direction by angry Christian activists and other social conservatives.

The White House has adopted a largely hands-off approach to the Specter controversy. And the senator's position was hardly strengthened on Sunday when Frist declined to say whether or not he would support Specter's elevation to the chairmanship of the committee.

The Tennessee Republican called Specter's position "disheartening to me. They were disheartening to a lot of different people," he said on "Fox News Sunday."

The Pennsylvania senator has been practicing damage control ever since. He's been lobbying fellow senators and assuring one and all he's a loyal Republican.

But several of the protesters said they didn't trust Specter, and they want Frist to keep him from being elevated to the Judiciary chairmanship.

"This is just the beginning," said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue. "We worked very hard to put Bush back in office... and now is not the time to derail the president's pro-life nominees."

Specter also met with Frist and other Senate GOP leaders on Tuesday, and planned to meet later in the day with the current GOP committee members, who get the first vote on whether Specter will replace current chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

Specter and the other Senate leaders would not comment after the meeting but several other senators have said they expected Specter to become Judiciary chairman.

Hatch is stepping down because of party-imposed term limits. Whatever decision the committee members make can be appealed to the full GOP caucus later.

Few GOP senators on the committee have spoken publicly about their feelings on the matter. But Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said Monday that he was still undecided.

"I wished he hadn't said it," Sessions said. "But if you read what he said in its entirety, it wasn't a direct threat to the president, although it would have been better left unsaid. It may simply be that there's a difference between being the chairman and making those statements and being a single member of the committee."