Some Terri zealots would like you to believe that all conservatives support them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Polls aren't everything, but most polls taken show that conservatives want to let Terri go to a better place. That voice needs to be heard on FreeRepublic.
h
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/7433131.htm
FLORIDA VOTERS
Public backs right to die, poll says
The intervention by Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature into the Terri Schiavo case is met with overwhelming voter disapproval.
BY LESLEY CLARK AND PETER WALLSTEN
lclark@herald.com
Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Republicans reignited a national debate on the right to die when they ordered a feeding tube reinserted into a brain-damaged woman, but the majority of the state's voters believe the politicians got it wrong, according to a new poll.
By nearly three to one, registered voters across religious, party and gender lines told pollsters they disagree with the intervention. While Bush and GOP legislators acted at the request of Terri Schiavo's parents to keep their daughter alive by overruling the wishes of her husband and a court, an overwhelming number of the poll's respondents believe that a spouse should determine whether an incapacitated person without a living will should be taken off life support.
''The governor is clearly in the wrong in terms of public opinion,'' said Democratic pollster Rob Schroth, who conducted the poll for The Herald and the St. Petersburg Times with a Republican pollster, Kellyanne Conway.
The responses were strong.
`THIS WAS A SHAME'
''Why would they go against what the courts and the judges have already decided?'' asked respondent Rosalind Jackson, a Winter Haven Republican. ``That poor girl has just been lingering for so long, and I felt finally she could get some peace. This was a shame.''
''How can I say this politely? It was a travesty, a farce,'' said respondent George Butzin, 46, of Clermont. ``I can't believe someone who espouses getting government out of our lives wants to put government in where it doesn't belong.''
The telephone survey of 800 registered voters, conducted Dec. 1-3, gauged public opinion on a variety of hot-button issues that could drive voter behavior next year in the nation's most populous swing state.
The poll also found that voters strongly favor lifting travel restrictions to Cuba and just as strongly oppose allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally.
While President Bush's approval ratings have slipped in recent months, due in part to troop casualties in Iraq, the survey found the war and the Schiavo case have not dramatically affected public opinion of his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush.
The governor, who overwhelmingly won reelection last year and is mentioned as a potential presidential contender in 2008, won favorable approval from 52 percent of respondents, a slight decline from the 56 percent that he posted in May. But he remains a polarizing figure, with 41 percent disapproving of his job performance. Blacks and working women accounted for his highest negatives.
While it appears the governor continues to get credit from voters for sticking with his principles, even if they disagree, his decline could reveal that his image is now tied to that of his brother, a wartime president.
''Jeb has always run 10 points ahead of his brother, now they're dead equal,'' Schroth said.
Gov. Bush's high-profile push to spend $350 million in taxpayer dollars to lure the Scripps Research Institute to Florida met with narrow approval, although voters overwhelmingly rejected spending public money on a new stadium for the Florida Marlins.
But it's the Schiavo case that has most gripped the nation, sparking an emotional debate over life and death.
Gov. Bush acted to keep Schiavo alive after thousands of e-mails and phone calls engineered by antiabortion activists, who view the case as a legal foothold in their quest to undo the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.
Florida Democrats have accused Bush and the Republican-led Legislature of using Schiavo to energize religious conservatives heading into the 2004 election. The Democratic front-runner to challenge President Bush next year, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, assailed their move as ''BS,'' while one of his rivals, U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, told reporters in Florida on Saturday that the decision should have been left up to the courts. The poll shows Democrats could have an audience for their attacks.
Even registered Republicans opposed their governor by 54-34 percent. Democrats rejected the move by 73-16 percent. Even more than 7 in 10 white men, the strongest supporters of the governor and the president, said they disagreed.
Among ethnic groups, only Hispanics backed the move, by 47-38 percent, perhaps because of strong religious faith, pollster Conway said. But across religious lines, Protestants, Catholics and Jews rejected the decision by at least 2-1.
GAY MARRIAGE
As strongly as they feel about Schiavo, registered voters vehemently oppose allowing gays and lesbians to marry.
The issue has exploded in recent weeks along the presidential campaign trail, since a court ruling in Massachusetts that gays should have the right to marry. Some leading Republicans are pushing for a federal constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex nuptials, hoping to force Democrats to confront an issue dear to the liberal wing of the party but unpopular among many voters.
The major Democratic presidential candidates have tiptoed around the issue, saying they back civil unions -- the kind approved in Vermont by Dean -- but not officially sanctioned marriage.
The poll found near-uniform opposition to gay marriages in Florida, with only independent and Jewish voters backing the idea.