Republican adversaries hammer at what each says is the other's extremism.
By Jeff Miller
Call Washington Bureau
April 4, 2004
ALTOONA | It was a mud fight for the cameras waged by men in dark blue
suits.
Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Pat Toomey spent most of their only debate Saturday
accusing each other of distorting the truth about their respective records and
firing off disparaging one-liners. The two Republicans are running for the U.S.
Senate nomination in the April 27 primary.
''Arlen, the idea that you're a fiscal conservative is harder to believe than
your single-bullet theory,'' said the Lehigh Valley's Toomey, making reference
to Specter's work investigating President Kennedy's assassination.
After an especially sharp exchange over military pay raises, Specter fired back,
''If my opponent had a collision with the truth, it would be a tremendous
impact.''
The tense, one-hour debate at WTAJ-TV in Altoona was indicative of the negative
tone of the campaign that's been waged through television ads and news releases.
The two clashed on abortion, stem-cell research, education, health care, medical
malpractice reform, Social Security, Medicare and foreign affairs, including the
war on terrorism.
The debate was taped Saturday afternoon, and 14 stations were scheduled to
televise it Saturday night, including WFMZ and WLVT in Allentown. Another 15
stations were to run it today. C-SPAN also planned to show the debate.
Toomey, the more conservative of the two, attacked first, saying Specter has a
habit of voting with liberals and Democrats before ''throwing a few votes to
conservatives'' before each primary. He called it ''the Specter two-step.''
''Across a wide range of issues, I represent the Republican wing of the
Republican Party,'' said Toomey, who represents the 15th District in the House.
''And Arlen Specter represents a set of liberal views that are just outside the
mainstream.''
Specter said Toomey was outside the mainstream.
Specter highlighted 76 votes in which Toomey was on the opposite side of the
state's 11 other Republican House members, including the bill adding
prescription drug coverage to Medicare.
He also referred frequently to his backing from President Bush and Pennsylvania
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, the state's leading conservative official. Specter said
Toomey makes Santorum ''look like a liberal.''
''The fact of the matter, ladies and gentlemen, is I'm a better Republican than
my opponent,'' Specter said.
As he has throughout the campaign, Specter avoided speaking Toomey's name.
Toomey sought throughout the debate to work his biography into his answers. He
talked about his two children, in answer to a question on school reform, and the
restaurants he and his brothers started. Saying he and his wife, Kris, would
like to have more children, Toomey said he feared the couple would have to leave
the state for the delivery unless Congress passes medical malpractice reform.
He said his parents might have to
leave the state to get medical attention, too. But his parents live in Rhode
Island.
Specter had a brief slip as well. In talking about education, Specter said he
agreed with ''Reagan on accountability.'' He said later he meant President Bush.
Support for military
Their most heated exchange came over military pay increases.
Specter charged that Toomey had voted against pay raises. Toomey said the charge
was false and that it was Specter who twice voted against increasing military
pay.
The record lends support to both sides.
Toomey has voted for every defense authorization and bill since coming to
Congress. The authorization bill sets the pay level and the spending bill funds
it. But he voted against a supplemental spending bill during the war in Kosovo
that partially funded a military pay increase. Toomey argued after the debate
the bill had nothing to do with military pay.
Specter voted against two defense authorization bills containing military pay
raises in 1993 and 1996. Specter said afterward that he didn't recall those
votes.
Asked about reducing the deficit, Specter talked about his support for a
balanced budget amendment and the line-item veto and took credit for defeating
proposed increases to last year's Labor-Health and Human Services spending bill.
Specter chairs the panel that wrote the bill.
Toomey said Specter had been recognized as ''the most wasteful spender in
Washington'' and had voted for five major tax increases. Specter, he said, wants
more money in Washington ''so that he gets to decide how this money gets spent.
I just think that's the wrong model.''
Specter defended two of the tax increases, saying they were part of deficit
reduction bills passed during the Reagan administration that also included
spending cuts.
Linking Specter to Kerry
The candidates showed sharp disagreements on foreign policy and the war on
terrorism.
Toomey criticized Specter for making associations with ''brutal regimes'' in the
Middle East, primarily Syria, for meeting with Saddam Hussein and for planning a
trip to Iran, which Toomey said would give support to Iranian mullahs trying to
squelch democratic efforts there and undermine the rebuilding of Iraq.
Toomey said Specter was wrong to say Saddam shouldn't face the death penalty and
for wanting Bush to go back to the United Nations one more time before launching
the war with Iraq.
''I disagree with the whole liberal John Kerry-Arlen Specter multinationalist
view of our foreign policy,'' Toomey said.
Specter denied he had been soft on terrorism or had undermined U.S. sovereignty.
He cited his efforts in the 1980s to allow the United States to prosecute
terrorists who kidnap Americans abroad.
Specter also defended his meetings with dictators, saying, ''We don't make peace
with our friends, we make peace with our enemies.''
A question about medical malpractice reform turned into a squabble over
alliances.
Toomey said Specter opposed capping jury payments in medical malpractice cases
because his campaign has taken millions of dollars from trial lawyers.
Specter used the charge to criticize Toomey as an opportunist who was helping
him raise money in the Lehigh Valley three years ago but was now trying to take
his seat with more than $1 million in support from the Club for Growth. The
president of the Club, a Washington-based fiscal conservative group, has talked
about wanting Specter's ''scalp'' to ''teach other senators a lesson so they
would behave,'' Specter said.
On stem-cell research, Specter said he supports it to cure diseases. He
mentioned that Nancy Reagan is on his side. Toomey, endorsed by anti-abortion
groups, said it was wrong to make embryos into commodities.
