(Via Drudge)
Well, this didn’t take long:
Specter warns Bush on high court nominations
The Republican expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush today against putting forth Supreme Court nominees who would seek to overturn abortion rights or are otherwise too conservative to win confirmation.
This is a fine thank you from someone who President Bush worked to get reelected. For those who didn’t keep up with every political race (I didn’t, but I kept up with quite a few), Arlen Specter faced a serious primary challenge from Rep. Pat Toomey (noted conservative Republican), and the help he received from the national GOP and President Bush were instrumental in helping him in the primaries.
While Specter is a loyal Republican — Bush endorsed him in a tight Pennsylvania GOP primary — he routinely crosses party lines to pass legislation and counts a Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, as one of his closest friends.
A self-proclaimed moderate, he helped kill President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court and of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. Specter called both nominees too extreme on civil rights issues. Sessions later became a Republican senator from Alabama and now sits on the Judiciary Committee with Specter.
I suppose we’ll have to keep the pressure on the Republicans if we don’t want them to turn into Democrats.