THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 13, 1995 TAG: 9505130008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Frank Rich
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
The oddest man out in American politics right now may be Arlen Specter - a Jew in a party in thrall to the religious right, a conservative champion of Clarence Thomas who is among the GOP's most ardent advocates for abortion rights, a presidential candidate who has yet to win points from pollsters or pundits.
But after two weeks of windy debate about what Bill Clinton did or didn't mean when he lambasted radio's ``promoters of paranoia,'' it's refreshing to listen to Specter, as I did in his office last week.
A humorless former prosecutor, the Pennsylvania senator doesn't speak in philosophical abstractions about the far right. When he opens hearings on abortion-clinic violence on Thursday - hearings he set up before Oklahoma City focused attention on the nation's violent fringe - he'll be nothing if not blunt.
He pulls out a copy of the notorious, abruptly withdrawn 1994 law review article from Pat Robertson's Regent University arguing that killing an abortion doctor is justifiable homicide, ``consistent with biblical truth.''
Then Specter makes his own argument:
``There is a continuum from Pat Buchanan's `holy war' to Pat Robertson's saying there's no separation of church and state, to Ralph Reed saying pro-choice candidates can't be on the Republican ticket, to Randall Terry saying `let a wave of hatred wash over you,' to the guy at Robertson's law school who says murdering an abortion doctor is justifiable homicide, to the guys who are pulling the triggers.''
Specter, now 65, has known Robertson, president of the Christian Coalition, since their Yale Law School days, but he only got angry when Christian conservatives booed his defense of church-and-state separation at the Iowa Republican convention last summer.
Ever since, Specter has been fighting the ``intimidation'' of the GOP by the religious right. ``It's really an effort through the Republican Party to write a new social order starting with abortion and school prayer, saying `Do it our way or else!' '' he says.
As the son of an immigrant peddler in Bob Dole's hometown of Russell, Kan., Specter remembers what it's like to be the only Jew during classroom prayers.
His cause metamorphosed into a presidential candidacy when he concluded that the rest of the field, including Dole, was moving so far to the right that a lone libertarian conservative might eke out a plurality in multicandidate primaries. The emergence of Pete Wilson doesn't threaten his monopoly on GOP moderates, Specter's theory goes, because the California governor's record on abortion (like everything else) is too inconsistent to pass as pro-choice.
And what about the political baggage Specter carries as a Jew? The senator pulls out another Xerox - an excerpt from Michael Halberstam's novel about a Jewish president, The Wanting of Levine - which he paraphrases to illustrate his point that only Jews are worried: ``They feel a Jew shouldn't put his head above the trenchline, because he'll make a mistake and hurt the Jewish people.''
A Jew does challenge the religious right at his own peril. Ralph Reed has tried to put Specter on the defensive by accusing him of attacking ``people of faith'' - as if attacking a political organization that appropriates the word Christian is synonymous with attacking Christians.
Specter won't be intimidated, but notes: ``I would have rather seen someone who is not Jewish take up this cause. If someone else had, I wouldn't have run for president.''
But no other Republican has taken up the cause. Saturday, in a typical reflection of the righter-than-thou pre-primary climate, Phil Gramm spoke on social issues at Liberty University, whose leader, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, has sold a videotape accusing President Clinton of murdering political opponents in Arkansas.
Roger Stone, the Nixon-Reagan-Bush hand who is Specter's campaign chairman, says that his candidate can win by losing in any case. Were Specter to run better than expected, proving that 25 to 30 percent of Republicans ``don't want to turn the party over to Pat Robertson,'' the eventual nominee will have the leverage to free himself from the religious right, rather than risk a rerun of the Bush debacle of '92.
Should Specter pull that off, he'll have achieved a victory for his party and country as important as the election of any president. ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
ARLEN SPECTER
by CNB