Specter cites Pat Robertson in defense

Arlen Specter has been making the media rounds in an attempt to fend off the effort to keep him from being selected as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The most recent volley is in today's Wall Street Journal, where Specter has written an op-ed piece. It is mostly a rehash of his "clarifying" statement, with a few new adornments. Interestingly, he quotes Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson in his own defense.

Rush has not joined in the move to see Specter denied the chairmanship, but he has not endorsed Specter either. At the end of this transcript, he concludes, "I would like it if there were somebody better, somebody else, but the world is not lost and the cause is not over and all is not doom and gloom if he still ends up there. But let's just wait and see." Hardly a ringing endorsement.

It is saying quite a lot when Specter quotes Pat Robertson for anything that Specter considers favorable. During his own ill-fated run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1995, Specter was quoted in the Virginian-Pilot, Robertson's hometown newspaper, as saying the following:

"There is a continuum from Pat Buchanan's 'holy war' to Pat Robertson's saying there's no separation of church and state, to Ralph Reed saying pro-choice candidates can't be on the Republican ticket, to Randall Terry saying 'let a wave of hatred wash over you,' to the guy at Robertson's law school who says murdering an abortion doctor is justifiable homicide, to the guys who are pulling the triggers."

Wow. Political opposition to pro-abortion candidates lies on the same plane of moral equivalence as killing doctors who perform the abortions. I have more than a passing familiarity with "the guy at Robertson's law school"; here is the synopsis of the law review article in question:

"Using the three people killed by Michael Griffin and Paul Hill as a point of departure, this article examines whether violence is an appropriate tactic in the effort to end the national policy of abortion-on-demand. In particular, it discusses whether killing abortionists as they arrive at abortuaries to perform regularly scheduled abortions is a legally justfiable [sic] use of force in defense of another person's life. Assuming that tactic could be legally justified, the article further asks whether it can also be morally justified. The authors conclude it cannot . . . ."

I have not read the entire article, and do not have it at my immediate disposal. But law reviews are intended to be fora where ideas can be discussed and debated at length, sometimes with controversy, to lay out fully the positions that can be taken on either side of an argument, then argue why the author believes his preferred position is the correct one. This article's conclusion apparently was that, even if you assume there is a legal justification for such an act (which, by the way, I completely disagree with, and whether the authors actually make that definitive statement is unclear from the synopsis), there is no moral justification for it.

Would stifling the debate so that uncontroversial statements aren't made be healthy? No. In our country, the arena of ideas is open to all comers. Controversial statements invite (and often deserve) criticism as part of that exchange. What is unfair, however, is a mischaracterization of the initial idea under debate. Specter assumed that since the article debated whether killing abortion doctors could be justifiable homicide, it invariably must have reached that conclusion. According to the above synopsis, however, exactly the opposite is true.

Specter baited Robertson throughout that campaign. In his speech announcing his candidacy, Specter said, "When Pat Robertson says there is no constitutional doctrine of separation between Church and State, -- I say he is wrong. The First Amendment freedom of religion is as important today -- as when the Bill of Rights was written. . . . When Ralph Reed says a pro-choice Republican isn't qualified to be our President, -- I say the Republican Party will not be blackmailed. I and millions of other pro-choice Republicans -- will not be disenfranchised." No one is disenfranchised who engages in debate, and coming out on the losing end of the democratic process also is not evidence of disenfranchisement; it means you have not persuaded enough people that your position is correct.

Specter later characterized Robertson as a "fringe" Republican, and stated that Robertson and Ralph Reed were "a real threat to the country."

Given this history, it is rich to see Specter relying on Robertson today to defend his ability to assume the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee.