Some in GOP Fear Effort May Alienate Voters

The extraordinary steps taken by congressional Republicans to save the life of Terri Schiavo have won plaudits from evangelical Christians and other conservative activists, but some Republicans worry about a potential backlash among others who view the intervention as an overbearing use of government power.

Just as Congress passed and President Bush signed legislation allowing federal courts to review whether Schiavo's feeding tube should be withdrawn, a poll by ABC News found that 70% of those surveyed believed congressional intervention was inappropriate.

Though some GOP strategists have argued that the issue is a political winner for the party because it appeals to religious conservatives, other Republicans warn that the bold maneuver risks alienating swing voters as well as Republicans worried about government invasions of individual privacy.

"It goes beyond shameless politics," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster. "It becomes a more crystallized proof point that we are no longer the party of smaller government. We have become a party of 'It doesn't matter what size government is as long as it is imposing our set of values.' "

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), before voting against the bill Bush later signed, asked: "How deep is this Congress going to reach into the personal lives of each and every one of us?"

Some of the conservative critics of Congress' action say the issue goes to the core of what kind of party the GOP will become. They worry it will further erode the party's commitment to limiting the role of the federal government.

"Conservatives who have criticized the idea that Washington should run everything ought to be sheepish" about getting involved in the Schiavo case, said David Boaz, an analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

I don't think it is risky at all. Don't forget that this passed almost unanimously in the Senate and with a healthy number of Democrats in the House. It was a bi-partisan effort. Only a small handful of RINOs joined Democrats in opposition.

While the move does reek of hypocrisy so would somebody who breaks a trespassing law to save a baby drowning in a pool. All that mattered was to save the life of a "drowning" invalid and they sought to do so by whatever legal measure they could.

I think woe is to those who stood in opposition for they exposed themselves as cheerleaders for death. The Democrats complain that "morals" helped Bush win the election and yet they prove, once again, their tin ear to the very morals they claim they too possess.

All they need to know is that twenty one court cases and sixteen different judges all reached the same conclusion.

Based on 10 or 15 year old medical data?

Appeals courts are bound by the "facts" presented to the lower Courts.

If you punch in the same flawed data 21 times into a computer program, the computer program will spit out the same flawed answer every time. If you do that 42 more times you will get the same result 42 more times.

As I wrote in another post:

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Would you help us laymen? Can a person with this type of brain damage feel pain, and other stimuli? This death by dehydration seems terribly cruel to me, and sounds very painful. .............FBD

Well, first of all, I have absolutely no idea what "this type of brain damage" is since the Michael Schiavo side seems to have done everything they could to prevent the complete workup that would be done if exactly the same type of patient named "Jane Doe" presented to a Neurology Department at St. Elsewhere Medical Center in the year 2005.

That is what bothers me about this case.

Here we have Judge Greer, a Probate Judge who has a mindset that tells him that a dead body is part of his job and would not know his own caudate nucleus from his dentate line if his own life depended on it making decisions based on what, in the year 2005, would be considered ancient medical data.

Terri Schiavo could have cortical functions and some degree of consciousness for all I know.

Terri Schiavo could be nothing more than a brain stem giving marching orders to her vital organs for all I know.

I have no idea.

All I know is that Judge Greer and Michael Schiavo are dead set (no pun intended) in making sure that Terri Schiavo does not get assessed with year 2005 technology and therapy trial.

In regards to death by dehydration, I have seen it often in elderly patients and the current medical conventional wisdom says that the patient feels nothing. Then again, no patient has come back from the grave to give me a report.

For me, personally, it gives me the creeps and I have told my family that if it ever gets to that point that they should "accidentally" turn up the morphine drip and let me go fast as I do not want to take the chance that my last ten days will be spent in a twilight sleep with a sensation of raging thirst.

Judge Refuses to have feeding tube reinserted in Terri Schiavo (FOX NEWS ALERT)...1,138 posted on 03/23/2005 6:46:21 AM PST by Polybius

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