Quit De Wining about the Santorum Spectercle

A few weeks ago, I sent an e-mail to my list, encouraging Pennsylvania pro-lifers to support Republican Rick Santorum in his rebid for the U.S. Senate against Democrat Bob Casey.

Both are pro-life, but because Santorum and the White House supported pro-abortion incumbent Arlen Specter in the 2004 Republican primary against pro-lifer Pat Toomey, pro-lifers consider him a traitor. Specter won 51-49 percent. Pro-lifers blame Santorum and Bush for the edge.

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This was typical of negative responses I received regarding my e-mail:

Sorry – just can't do it. … These Republicans must understand there is a price to be paid for going against their pro-life/Christian base.

Pro-abort politicians understand that with one just false step, their liberal base will leave them. … We, on the other hand, keep forgiving and forgiving our politicians for stabbing us in the back. No more.

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Let Rick Santorum be the example to all the other Republican politicians that we will not allow them to play games with the lives of our unborn children, and if they do, they will be gone.

I wish Santorum had not supported Specter. But would turning from Santorum help or hurt the pro-life cause?

I submit it would hurt, badly.

Read what Manuel Miranda wrote. Miranda is an attorney and former U.S. Senate staffer who lost his job over the Democrat judicial memo flak. Miranda now leads the Third Branch Conference, a group promoting the advancement of conservative federal judges through the confirmation process. He said:

In my time in the Senate, I came to meet the vain and vainglorious, all with certificates of election. I came to learn that most senators are quite replaceable. …

I want to tell you that in my observation there was one Republican senator who is not replaceable. In fact, he was the indispensable man on all of the issues that values voters care about. Even if we can nitpick, no one represents us more consummately. That man, of course, is Rick Santorum. …

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Simply put, without him many things that you and I care about would simply not be championed by anyone else, or at least not as effectively. Even now when you hear me express disappointment on the judge issue, I suspect that lack of vision from the GOP may well be because Rick is understandably busy with his overwhelming campaign. Remember that it was Santorum who led the 40-hour debate of 2003. …

As the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, the third-ranking leadership position, Rick … asks senators to take one for the team from time to time. Rick stands by them in moments when loyalty counts. And in a leader, I have learned the hard way that loyalty counts.

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That includes in elections. … [B]ecause Rick asked Arlen Specter very often to take one for the team, Rick stood by him in 2004. And I can tell you, as one who doubted, that the loyalty has been repaid and it has worked out well. …

Leaders in the Senate speak to the press all the more often, where others hide, and all the more often they are targeted. It is all the more difficult when, as Rick does, you speak in the language of Judeo Christian morality, or say the obvious that no one else dare speak. …

[Here is] what I said of Rick in September in an Opinion Journal article:

"No Republican senator has done more to make the confirmation of John Roberts possible, because no Republican senator is more responsible for making the judiciary issue a national electoral winner for Republicans, or for making colleagues understand its significance to constituents. …"

Judges are key to the pro-life issue, and their significance in our battle points to a second reason we cannot lose Santorum. It would risk losing the Republican Senate majority.

Wrote Hugh Hewitt in World Magazine May 27:

If the Republicans lose control of the United States Senate, or even forfeit a net of three seats in the upper body of the Congress, it is almost certain that George W. Bush will not be able to get a third conservative justice confirmed should the opportunity arise.

If Patrick Leahy returns to the chairmanship of the Senate's Judiciary Committee … no genuine judicial conservative will clear the first hurdle on the way to confirmation. Sen. Leahy's record proves that.

Even if the GOP holds a nominal majority after the smoke clears in November, expect unbreakable filibusters if there are not at least 50 solid votes to invoke the "constitutional option" which the Democrats dread. …

So a Supreme Court poised to return to originalist practices and traditional decision making will in fact be just a vote or two in the Senate beyond reach.

And then the "purists" will have their "victory."

Politics is a messy business. But majorities require compromise and commitment. The best result is to threaten disengagement, and then to work harder than ever for a conservative triumph.

On June 3, Hewitt wrote in World about pro-life malaise surrounding Ohio Republican Sen. Mike DeWine. He could have been speaking of Santorum:

[O]pposition to a DeWine re-election seems almost bizarrely contrary to the approach a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, pro-property rights, or pro-national security conservative should take. …

If Buckeye State evangelicals carefully and prudently consider the best interests of the country and the enormous power of a single Senate vote as well as the closeness of the division on the U.S. Supreme Court, they should not withhold support from Mike DeWine; they should instead send in their small or large checks and volunteer to walk precincts.

A Senate majority is a terrible thing to throw away.

To contact the Santorum campaign, go to www.ricksantorum.com.

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