Posted on 03/30/2005 5:56:53 AM PST by LowCountryJoe
I rarely devote two consecutive columns to the same issue. But the tragic case of Terri Schiavo needs some additional light shed upon it.
First, the nation is wrong if it has the impression that Florida is some sort of strange beast whose footsteps are out of sync with the rest of America. Our InsiderAdvantage flash poll conducted late last week revealed that 65 percent of Floridians agreed with the court decisions not to order the reinsertion of Schiavo's feeding tube.
A more far-reaching story remains what I touched on in my last column. The emergency congressional action two weekends ago that tried to save Schiavo's life could potentially have a boomerang political effect on the White House and the Republicans in Congress. My update is that the boomerang has come whizzing back even faster than expected.
Many GOP members of Congress privately groused about being summoned back to Washington in the first place. Doubly annoying to them was that the special weekend session was convened to address an issue that both their philosophical and political guts told them was against many of their most basic Republican instincts.
By the end of last week, the level of consternation among Republicans on Capitol Hill had grown. It had become painfully clear that much of the nation felt Congress had overreached in its actions.
Even more frustrating to Republicans was the verbal beating that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was taking from fanatical, save Schiavo activists. They urged him to have state law enforcement officers storm Schiavo's hospice and take her into custody. They even accused both President George W. Bush and Jeb Bush of not helping at all!
How absurd. The president flew back to Washington early from vacation to sign the eleventh-hour congressional bill (apparently, we now learn, against his own best instincts). And Gov. Bush used up every reasonable legal resource to save Schiavo, not to mention much of the political capital he had stored up with his GOP-dominated state legislature.
The Bush brothers fell victim to the "no-good-deed-goes-unpunished" syndrome. With self-promotional characters liked longtime "Christian activist" Randall Terry leading the right-wing media assault on the Bushes, it's becoming clearer by the day that the Schiavo situation has spilled over the margins of decent political dissent, and is now at least partly in the province of some who have little regard for the basic rule of law.
As I've said before, I'd like to see Florida legislation that specifically addresses an incapacitated or comatose person's lack of written instructions when questions of their life or death arise. Or perhaps new laws that deal with a spouse, such as Michael Schiavo, being able to hold the keys of life and death over a wife or husband, even as he or she has in essence started another family altogether.
And yes, it enrages me that this woman is literally being starved to death right before her parents' eyes.
But there remains the need to face issues like this one both creatively and calmly. The alternative is to act or speak under a spell of emotion only, even though you know a fit of indignant pique isn't going to change the final outcomes, but only draw more attention to yourself.
Jeb Bush should be hailed for his intense political and legal efforts on behalf of Schiavo and her parents. He deserves at least equal praise for displaying the sound judgment it took not overstep the boundary of his executive authority. This helped preserve the integrity and workability of Florida's constitution and legal system.
On the flip side, the GOP in Washington, D.C. has sustained a self-inflicted blow, perhaps temporary. What had been concerted action on virtually every important issue before them -- except maybe Social Security -- has now splintered.
For the past several years, Republican congressmen in Washington and legislators in many states have controlled the lawmaking reins. They have operated in a top-down, our-way-or-the-highway style that is likely to spur the kind of mini-revolt against party leadership that happens from time to time.
Rest assured there are plenty of GOP elected officials who are suddenly wondering if they are now appearing to be the party of big budgets, intervention and expansion of government power.
The Terri Schiavo tragedy may serve as a turning point in how Republicans and other conservatives react to the issues of today -- and what may be their political success or lack of it tomorrow.
With a 45 percent approval rating, it's clear that President Bush will need the help of all Republicans to redirect GOP policy initiatives. Party loyalists now need to somehow regain the high ground of preserving the Constitution and restricting the role that government plays in our lives.
Supporters of these concepts are the ones that comprise the critical "Republican base" that must be held together and energized for action -- not the Randall Terrys of the world.
Someone please remove this guys feeding tube! S*it is flowing out his mouth!
save
How many agree with the decree that no attempt be made to feed her by mouth in the conventional manner?
How many agree with the decree that no attempt be made to feed her by mouth in the conventional manner?
The author is wrong. Our leaders initially began to lead and then they got cold feet.
I understand political expediency, I guess, but it's too bad none of them had the courage of their convictions.
Because they certainly had the authority.
Good article here. Howlin, could you ping your list?
the article was right on target..thanks for highlighting it...Randall Terry and Jesse Jackson are media hounds who have found another cause...
I have the cure for "being groused" to have to return to Washington. Term limits.
If there is an issue of out of control government power, it lies in the judiciary. There are no effective checks to their power. Impeachment is a seldom used tool; elections are farcical, as both parties say little or nothing about their candidates' judicial philosophy; and the legal positivism that has become the norm in American jurisprudence basically allows judges to interpret the Federal and state constitutions as they will. That a probate court judge can ignore his state's legislature and Governor as well as the U.S. Congress indicates the extent of judicial dominance in the American body politic.
We have had the GOP in the White House for 18 out of the last 30 years. The Republicans have controlled at least one house of Congress for 16 out of the last 30 years. Seven of the nine standing justices on the Supreme Court are Republican nominees. Of those justices, only Scalia, Thomas, and (most of the time) Rehnquist can be considered conservative. Abortion on demand is still the law of the land; there is little restraint on pornography; sodomy is virtually a civil right, and homosexuals are a de facto privileged minority. If social conservatives are less than thrilled with the Republican Party, they have good reason for their position.
Ah, right to life by tag poll. Somebody rewrite the Declaration of Independence so we can be consistent in this country!
IF the reporting that Mikey stopped Terri's rehab (provided for by the malpractice settlement) one month after the money was received is true, then Terri might well have been able to eat the normal way like a champ by now. IF Terri was indeed able to swallow jello and ice cream as allegedly reported by some of her nurses (the ones not fearful of Mikey Shiavo's wrath) WITHOUT rehab, then it's quite logical that she might well be able to eat and swallow normally now.
This is the video that should be shown on the news everynight - it is even more powerful than the balloon video.
http://web.tampabay.rr.com/ccb/videos/Terri_Big_Eyes.rm
This is not reflex action - she heard the doctor, she opened her eyes as wide as she could to impress him.
Even Fox news has ignored this clip.
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TERRI is US
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I should say "might well have been able to eat and swallow with PROPER rehabilitation".
"Rest assured there are plenty of GOP elected officials who are suddenly wondering if they are now appearing to be the party of big budgets, intervention and expansion of government power."
There are plenty of moderate voters who are appalled at this big govt big tax debacle.
He deserves at least equal praise for displaying the sound judgment it took not overstep the boundary of his executive authority.
This helped preserve the integrity and workability of Florida's constitution and legal system.
He sure didn't seem very confident in FLs legal and legislative system a little over a week ago:
"I'm not sure we can get it done here in Florida," Martinez quoted (Gov.) Bush as saying just after a new Schiavo measure stalled in the Florida Legislature. "Do whatever you can federally."
I haven't read everything that has been written on this subject (I rather suspect that would take the better part of each day to make such an attempt), but I believe that is the first time that I have seen putative reluctance on the part of President Bush to act alluded to. I wonder what Mr. Towery's source of this information might be; it doesn't seem to comport with other statements that President Bush has made.
This statement invalidates the argument right away. The whole reason Terri Schindler is being killed is because "government power" was exerted, in the form of the courts imposing a death sentence upon an individual who stands innocent before the bar of justice, who has not even been accused of a crime, much less convicted of a capital offense. Does not the author understand that the courts are a branch of the government.
Actions taken by the legislature and executive branches were an attempt to exercise some measure of restraint over another branch of government that has overreached its authority and is abusing a citizen of the land in the most egregious manner possible. The whole theory of tripartite government is establishment of checks and balances. That this has failed in this case is a part of the larger tragedy.
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