Mitt Romney in last week’s debate hit Rick Santorum where he’s most vulnerable among conservatives — his 2004 campaign to save liberal, pro-choice Sen. Arlen Specter from a conservative primary challenge.
Santorum’s decision to throw his full weight behind Specter has hung over his head for eight years, and many conservatives and pro-lifers have never gotten over it. Here’s the story:
When Pat Toomey announced in early 2003 that he would run against Specter in Pennsylvania’s GOP primary, it gave conservatives and pro-lifers their best chance to deny Specter the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee. Judiciary has jurisdiction over abortion law and screens nominees to Supreme Court, and by virtue of seniority Specter was in line to chair the committee after the 2004 election. Since Roe v. Wade took abortion out of the legislative process, judicial nominations have been proxy battles over abortion, and Specter was the last man pro-lifers wanted as field marshal.
Specter wasn’t simply pro-choice. He called Roe v Wade “inviolate” and maintained it was correctly decided, despite its sloppy argumentation and made-up constitutional grounding.
Specter didn’t just champion Roe, he also saved it. When Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987, according to Bork’s handler Tom Korologos, “Specter hit the game-winning RBI” in the effort to kill Bork’s nomination. Instead of Bork, Reagan appointed Anthony Kennedy, who in 1992 cast the deciding vote in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe. Specter saved Roe, and then Santorum saved Specter.
Santorum and President Bush didn’t merely endorse Specter. Had they officially endorsed Specter and stayed quiet, nobody could blame them. Instead, the two men did everything in their power to help Specter.
As Toomey gained in the final weeks of the campaign, Santorum flew around the state with Specter and cut a television ad — just Santorum, talking into the camera, telling conservatives to back his liberal colleague. Bush probably made a bigger impact, but Santorum “was in full throttle,” recalls Mark Dion, Toomey’s campaign manager, who says Santorum was “working his donors fairly aggressively to either stay out or to give to Specter.”
Then 10 days out, Bush flew into Pennsylvania and held a Specter-Santorum rally where he declared “I’m here to say it as plainly as I can: Arlen Specter is the right man for the U.S. Senate.”
In the end, Specter beat Toomey by 17,000 votes — less than one vote per precinct. That day, I interviewed voters from Allentown to Harrisburg, and every last Specter voter cited Bush and Santorum’s support as their reason for backing Specter. Had Santorum not worked so hard, Specter would have lost.
Bush and Santorum’s arguments at the time were bogus. First, nominating Toomey was not tantamount to electing a Democrat to that seat — Toomey would have been favored over Democrat Joe Hoeffel. Second, even if Republicans lost that seat, in April 2004 there was no threat of a Democratic takeover of the Senate. Finally, it was ridiculous that Specter would help Bush win Pennsylvania, or that Pennsylvania would even be in play in a close election.
Santorum’s most recent defense — that he got Specter to pledge to champion Bush’s nominees — seems farfetched. Specter himself denied this on radio and television last week. There’s also contemporaneous evidence undermining Santorum’s claim: Just after the November 2004 election, Specter said it was “unlikely” he would pass out of the Judiciary Committee any nominee “who’d overturn Roe versus Wade.”
Those remarks sparked a conservative uproar and an orchestrated effort to deny Specter the chairmanship. For two weeks after the election, a grass-roots anti-Specter campaign raged, with conservatives deluging GOP Senate leaders and Judiciary Committee members with phone calls to deny Specter the gavel.
It was in this crucible, Senate aides told me at the time, that Specter promised to fight for any Bush nominees to the high court. In the end Specter proved an asset in getting Bush’s nominees on the Supreme Court — he provided liberal cover for conservatives John Roberts and Sam Alito. But it was the grass-roots furor, not Santorum’s loyalty, that moved Specter.
Santorum permanently damaged his image. “For people who were young conservatives then,” one of Toomey’s 2004 staffers told me last week, “the disappointment with Santorum turned into distrust” of both Santorum and the GOP leadership.
At the time, Santorum’s defense was simple Senate numbers: “Fifty-five Republicans” he shot back at a questioner at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2005 — again implying Toomey would have lost.
But then Specter delivered the “game-winning RBI” for Obama’s stimulus and left the party to give Democrats the 60 votes they needed to pass Obamacare. After that Santorum stopped defending his decision and started admitting a mistake. More recently, he’s pivoted to the Roberts-and-Alito defense.
Rick Santorum understands politics is about compromise. But compromises don’t come with guarantees, and sometimes they blow up in your face. Santorum bears the powder stains of saving Specter.
Timothy P.Carney, The Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Monday and Thursday, and his stories and blog posts appear on washingtonexaminer.com.
