by Matt Barr

The mandate: Be moderate!

Weaving together nicely the entries below about coalitions and how Bush supporters supposedly see a moral mandate that isn't there that his opponents want to magnify because it will backfire (breath) is a recent post on Michael Totten's blog.

Immoderate Republicans are having fits about Arlen Specter, a liberal Republican from Pennsylvania, who is slated to head the Senate's Committee on the Judiciary. Specter, you see, isn’t too jazzed about packing the Supreme Court with righties....

I am not “pro-life.” Sorry. I’d like to be, just as I’d like to be anti-war. But I’m not. So, of course I’m biased in Arlen Specter’s favor. I’m counting on the likes of him to put the brakes on the Republican Party and get them to govern from the center. I may have voted for Bush this year, but sure as the stars come out at night I don’t support any right-wing social agenda. There’s no way my split-ticket vote can be construed as lending support to a mandate for either side. That’s the whole point of voting split-ticket. It is only half-hearted partial support. It is explicitly anti-mandate.

An update to the post, citing Andrew Sullivan's number crunching that discovers -- gasp! -- that the "moral values" vote was significantly smaller this year than in previous elections, warns kind of prissily (excuse me, Michael) "Watch it. Last week's election wasn't the last one."

There's little doubt that the Corner's crusade against Specter has more to do with the Senator's pro-choice proclivities and a (probably correct) assumption that gosh, President Bush did win pretty decisively and that normally (were the numbers reversed for Bush and Kerry, for example) wouldn't mean that on the first issue to pop up after the election the President should knuckle under to his more "moderate" opponents. Is the most sensible interpretation of 59 million-plus votes and 286 electoral college votes that it was "explicitly anti-mandate?" Beyond Tottenville, anyway?

But all that aside, it's a crummy position to take for another reason: To any serious reader of the text and history of our Constitution, having a Judiciary Committee chairman vetting out any nominee likely to be pro-life is no better than a Chairman vetting out any nominee likely to be pro-choice. The President and the Senate ought to be concerned with whether the judge is able, wise and willing to judge, not legislate. This should be true whether he or she is "pro-choice" or "pro-life."

In my own little Happy World (Barrville?) a judge who interprets the restrictions of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments on government power correctly will conclude that abortion is a matter for the people to vote on in the states. But, see, I won't consider Specter ascending to the Chairmanship, if it happens, to be a personal affront to the way I voted in the election, as Michael evidently would Specter's being blocked. He and I both found common ground with the President on the issues that mattered most, and finger-wagging and promising to retaliate in the mid-term elections (Michael, if you "split" your vote, you probably didn't vote for a Republican Senator or Representative this time around, did you? Fat lot of good it did you) seems just kind of, lacking a kind way of putting it, dumb.

Conservatives and libertarians and those of us caught in the netherworld in-between not wanting a Judicial Committee Chairman who promises to only let pro-choice judges out for a vote is not a sign of the President overstepping his bounds. We're talking about some dumb unwritten rule about seniority in the Senate, anyway, not an improper "litmus test" for Committee Chairpersons who are otherwise qualified and entitled to a full and fair hearing on their merits. If Sen. Specter got one of those, we could settle this the American Way, dammit. With vacuous interrogation about Coke cans and such; just give us some time to go find or manufacture an Anita Hill, would you?

Further on this subject, I found it interesting that Sen. Schumer sent a letter in June, 2003 to the President recommending some people he might consider nominating to Supreme Court vacancies. At the top of the list? "The Honorable Arlen Specter, Republican Senator from Pennsylvania." Now, naturally, that was so the Democrats could get a Senate seat back, but it's funny how that would almost solve the same problem making Specter Attorney General would. (Except he'd make a lousy Supreme Court justice, which, being a life-tenured job, is a little more of moment than his being a lousy AG, who serves at the pleasure of the President.)

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