The Specter Agreement  - Were the pro-life people sold out?

These are comments of Paul Weyrich on Senator Arlen Specter
Written at the request of Fr. Frank Pavone
November 19, 2004

The agreement Senator Arlen Specter signed is the best we could achieve under the circumstances.

The seniority system is so strong in the Senate that only one Senator was willing to advocate his ouster (Inhofe of OK).

That being the case, we are better off with Specter now publicly tied down than we would be with an ousted Specter who was obligated to no one.

Specter is smart. He is intimidating. His colleagues are afraid of him. If he had been toppled, he would have worked with the Democrats to destroy the President’s judicial nominees.

This way he had to agree in public that pro-life judges will get fair treatment. Moreover, he agreed to try to implement measures to stop the filibuster of judges.

It was good that we advocated the ouster of Sen. Specter. It caused him to be willing to negotiate. It caused his colleagues such as Senator Larry Craig (R.-ID) to push him into the agreement he finally signed.

Will he go back on his word? Perhaps. But he will do so at a price. And since the agreement was public it is far less likely that he can now make a U-turn.

If pro-family activists had not been willing to make the calls, e-mails, and faxes, we never would have had this extraordinary victory.

Updated on RARTL Feb 2005