Specter represents yardstick for GOP
WASHINGTON -- For voters outside Pennsylvania, it's hard to think of Senator Arlen Specter without his finger pointed at someone.
As a two-decade member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Specter has been a regular part of the national drama over judicial confirmations -- a series as long-running and faithful to its formula as NBC's ''Law & Order" -- and he's such a tough questioner that sometimes it seems that he alone could have provoked O. J. Simpson to confess.
Specter, a former district attorney in Philadelphia, practices a brand of politics that draws heavily on the traditions of law enforcement. Like fellow prosecutor-politicians John F. Kerry and Rudolph Giuliani, Specter approaches governing like courtroom advocacy -- grilling wrongdoers and offering his own windy summations. It's a style of politics that traces back to Estes Kefauver, the former Tennessee senator whose hearings first exposed the Mafia. It can be exciting and grating at the same time.
This faith in seeking facts and drawing fresh conclusions is an ideology of a sort, but one that doesn't easily fall into the traditional political spectrum. As a result, inquisitor-politicians can be both loved and hated by their parties -- loved when there's a case to build against the opposition (as when Specter vilified Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings), but hated when they start parsing facts on issues colleagues see as matters of principle.
Even by the standards for inquisitor-politicians, Specter has deviated far from his party's orthodoxy. That party is, of course, Republican, and many within are angered by Specter's legalistic views on such values-oriented issues as abortion (he's for the right to privacy but favors the ban on late-term abortions), the Clinton impeachment (he voted against removing President Clinton because the charges were ''unproven," even though he thought Clinton was guilty), and foreign affairs (he's advocated for war-crimes prosecutions as a means of enforcing international law.)
Today, in the Pennsylvania senatorial primary, the right wing is seeking revenge against Specter, backing Congressman Pat Toomey in a well-funded challenge. The race has emerged as a test of how the Republican Party can best protect its majority in Congress -- by tolerating independent voices like Specter's or purging them in the hopes that a consistent, disciplined message will inspire a deeper faith in voters.
President Bush and his political guru, Karl Rove, have endorsed Specter and done everything possible to discourage Toomey. Bush will, of course, be on the ballot in Pennsylvania this November, with hopes of burying the Democrats with a win there. His support for Specter suggests that he'd rather fly into battle with a long-serving moderate as his wingman than a true-believing abortion foe and tax-cutter like Toomey.
This is consistent with the way Bush has governed. With a budget surplus to spend, he both sated the party's base with a historically large tax cut and indulged the pork-barrel wing of the Republican Party, which argues that a majority party has to buy a little support on the margins by giving in to local projects.
That's the approach that led to four decades of postwar dominance by the Democrats, who governed with majorities featuring every stripe of politician, from far-right Southerners to prairie populists to college-town socialists. The resulting chaos was also, arguably, what caused the Democratic egg to finally break apart 10 years ago, never to come back together again.
These days, many Republican incumbents can well remember the alienation of serving in the minority. They just can't figure out what's the best way to keep from falling backward -- by building a big tent or a strong ideological bunker.
Still, in a politically polarized country, with one party narrowly controlling the White House and Capitol Hill, there's more at stake in the Specter-Toomey race than just the survival of the Republican majority.
Even as Republicans run up greater margins in the South and West, and the Democrats become further entrenched in the Northeast and the West Coast, each party must build a consensus with the help of its wayward sons and daughters in unfriendly parts of the country.
Bush's budget priorities have run up against moderates like Specter, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Olympia Snowe of Maine. Democratic senators have gritted their teeth while being chastised by their Southern brethren like John Breaux of Louisiana and, especially, Zell Miller of Georgia.
Now, a president who likes to answer factual questions with talk of values seeks to campaign alongside a senator who answers questions about values with a lawyerly reference to facts. There can be stability in that kind of balance.
Republicans who oppose abortion and favor small government can certainly find a better advocate than Specter. Democrats who oppose Bush aren't getting much satisfaction out of Specter, either. But for those whose views fall in between, he's like Perry Mason in a country full of Archie Bunkers and Murphy Browns.
Peter S. Canellos can be reached at canellos@globe.com.
