LITMUS TEST

This article in The Hill says that Arlen Specter really might not get the Judiciary Committee chairmanship after all -- and that if certain senators don't block him, evangelicals won't support their likely presidential bids:

Specter’s post-election statement that judicial nominees who oppose abortion rights may have a hard time getting confirmed has put Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Specter’s junior colleague, Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), in difficult positions.

Both men are viewed to have White House ambitions. Frist is expected to retire from the Senate at the end of the next Congress to run for president, while Santorum’s supporters expect him also to run for the White House, perhaps as early as 2008.

The support of social conservatives is crucial to the presidential ambitions of both men, as conservatives — particularly evangelical Christians — demonstrated last week by helping President Bush defeat Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry by a comfortable margin.

Yup -- you knew Frist wanted to go for it, but did you know Santorum wants to be your Commander-in-Chief? Very, very soon?

But he might not stand a chance, even if his positions are completely compatible with those of the religious conservatives, unless he participates in this anmti-Specter fatwa.

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By the way, the end of the Hill article mentions yet another area in which Specter violates conservative correctness:

Specter may be hurt by his positions on tort reform, a central element of Bush’s second-term agenda.

In the past election cycle, he accepted more than three times as much money in political contributions from lawyers and law firms than from any other industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And Specter’s son is a prominent Philadelphia-based trial lawyer.

Two words, Arlen: Jim Jeffords. If they block you, that's a nice way to tell 'em what they can do with their fatwa.