Summary
[ARLEN SPECTER]'s campaign has sought to paint [PAT TOOMEY] as a fringe candidate. "He's not far right, he's far out!" says one Specter press release that cites 76 votes in which Toomey was the only Pennsylvania Republican on a given side of an issue. Toomey's "lonely votes" are mostly against spending proposals, expansions of parks, and foreign aid, and he treats them as a badge of honor. "There are times I've been part of a relatively small group of members of Congress voting against something because I think it's inconsistent with our Constitution, or because it's egregiously bad policy," he says.
At Toomey events, supporters rarely mention his votes against Medicare drug benefits or campaign finance reform. They mention Specter's vote against [Robert Heron Bork], Specter's "not proven" vote on charges against Democratic President Bill Clinton, and even Specter's pivotal role in crafting the controversial single-bullet theory on the assassination of President John Kennedy, 40 years ago. And Toomey sympathizers almost invariably bring up one issue: abortion. "I'm pro-life," says Pittsburgh Republican Committee Chairman Bob Hillen. "Specter is not pro-life. Toomey is." Hillen says he's not supporting Toomey per se, because the Republican State Committee has endorsed Specter, and local committees aren't allowed to buck the state. But the Specter campaign has accused him of breaking ranks, Hillen says, perhaps because he helped Toomey get the petition signatures necessary to get on the ballot. "When I was circulating [nominating] petitions, I carried both Specter and Toomey petitions," Hillen says. "More people wanted to sign the Toomey petitions."Twenty-three years after Specter took a seat in the Senate, he's still a singular figure in that collegial institution. He was voted "Meanest Senator" in a 2002 poll of Congressional staffers by Washingtonian magazine. Citizens Against Public Waste crowned Specter 2003's "Porker of the Year" for his proclivity at stuffing funding for pet projects into unrelated legislation. And an August National Review cover story called him "The Worst Republican Senator." The conservative magazine conceded that Specter "may not be the most unreliable GOP senator" but said he "is almost certainly the most harmful, because he is smart, ruthless, and influential."See the full content of this document
Extract
The Righty & the Switch Hitter
FACED WITH AN INCREASINGLY RIGHT-LEANING REPUBLICAN PARTY AND CONSERVATIVE PRIMARY OPPONENT PAT TOOMEY, ARLEN SPECTER'S SWITCH-HITTING DAYS MAY BE NUMBERED
What's a Republican? Ten-month-old Vanessa clearly has no clue. And yet she's about to play a bit part in a political battle that may help settle that question at least in Pennsylvania, and possibly in the U.S. SenateVanessa and her 18-year-old mother, Mary, occupy one of a row of chairs arrayed along a wall of the Community Room at Washington Hospital. Both long walls are lined with teen mothers and fathers, dressed in drool-on-me-casual clothes and holding well-behaved babies. The center of the room features an oval of chairs occupied by more stylish teens, and no babies. That's because the inner ring is reserved for "peer educators," many of whom travel to area middle schools preaching sexual abstinence. The symbolism couldn't be clearer: abstinence in, teen pregnancy out.At the top of the inner circle, directly opposite the TV cameras, sit Republican senators Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum. The symbolism of that pairing is also crystalline. Specter is being called a liberal by his pr...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
