"Most of them like to get re-elected. Others like to well thought of by their friends. Schiavo has made this more than just a partisan battle that the Republicans can win. Now its rationality vs emotionality."
Rationality, emotionality, doesn't really matter.
We are not ruled by reason or emotion, but by representatives chosen by voters. A vote cast on emotion is precisely as valid as a vote cast based on reason. There is no "rationality requirement" to cast a valid vote.
One branch of the Republican Party is determined to not honor its promises of thirty years to another branch of the party, because honoring that pledge will evoke an immediate firestorm of bitter emotional protests mostly from people who don't vote Republican anyway, but also from pro-choice economic Republicans.
Republicans have to choose which part of their base to alienate: the Christians or the economic pro-choice conservatives.
The RATIONAL answer is to give the Christians what they want, because economic pro-choice conservatives are PRIMARILY interested in money and economics, and they will only get higher taxes and regulation from the Democrats if they refuse to vote for the Republican Party anymore because the Republicans chose to satisfy the needs of their pro-life Christian base. Angering the economic conservatives by strongly enforcing life here will not lose the economic conservatives. This is not really their issue, and they are rational actors.
By contrast, betraying the "emotional" Christians will result in their leaving the Republican party. It will not be RATIONAL for the Christians to continue to support Republicans who had the power, but did not use it to rebuke the anti-life Judiciary or Democrats either by saving Terri or applying the Nuclear Option. The economic pro-choice Republicans will be happy that they were not forced, as a party, to support a Christian cause they don't really agree with. But then the party splits, the Democrats win, and the economic conservatives get their taxes hiked anyway.
The RATIONAL thing for the Republicans to do is save Terri and pass the nuclear option, and weather out the storm of pissed off people. The Left will be furious, but doesn't vote Republican anyway. The closet pro-choice economic conservatives will be disgusted that their hand was "forced" to give the pro-life Christians what they want, but the core economic agenda of the Republicans - which is the economic conservatives' REAL issue - will be protected. And the pro-lifers will be more loyal than ever.
Demographics means that the Christians will be more and more important in coming elections. The Christians are emotional right now, and their emotions will take millions of them right out of the party if the party continues to betray them on obvious life issues: Terri and the Nuclear Option.
If the Republicans satisfy them, there will be a hellstorm of emotion on the other side, mostly Democrats. Economic Republicans will ALSO be angry, but they have to master their emotions with reason and remember that from having the Christians in political harness, they have managed to get their economic agenda.
The economic pro-choice (libertarian) Republicans believe, quite irrationally, that they can get their whole economic agenda AND not have to enact a pro-life agenda. The numbers do not exist to do that. At all. It is not rational to believe you're going to have a low tax, deregulated economy and euthanasia and abortion on demand. The Christians won't support that, and the economic pro-choice libertarians are not an expanding minority nor a plurality.
You note that politicians want to get re-elected.
Yes, they do.
So, if they move to save Terri and pass the Nuclear Option, why do they not get re-elected?
Because the Democrats go wild with fury?
Democrats don't vote for Republicans anyway. The people who will go wild with fury over the saving of Terri and the invocation of the nuclear option vote Democratic.
Because the economic Republicans will be very angry about "government intervention"?
Yes, they might be.
But let's be rational.
The Republicans have enacted almost the whole agenda of the economic right. If the Democrats win, the whole economic agenda of the right will be dismantled completely.
So, will the economic right be irrational and emotional two years hence and vote against its own interest by voting against the Republicans for taking a pro-life stance?
No.
Where else do the economic Republicans have to go?
Will they vote to hike their own taxes and eliminate their capital gains and dividends tax breaks because they are furious at Republicans for saving a woman's life and getting pro-choice judges on the judiciary two years ago?"
No.
The rational thing for the Republican leadership to do right now is to infuriate the Left and placate the Christians by invoking the Nuclear Option and intervening to save Terri Schiavo.
Any clear-headed analysis makes that clear.
The Republicans are not doing it, because economic Republicans are also closet pro-choicers, for the most part, and they are in command of the party. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
This week, with the Schiavo case and waffling on the nuclear option, the economic conservatives are asserting their command of the party. Yes, they can refuse to intervene to save Terri, and yes, they can refuse to pass the Nuclear Option. But in 2006 they will discover the stark limits of their power, because no, they cannot behave that way and keep the Christians in the same party with them.
I see the brave efforts at spin going on now, to try and focus the Christian pro-lifers' anger on the Democrats. Not going to work.
We already know that the Democrats are life-hating thralls of evil.
But we also know that the Republicans have the power. They are the majority in all six branches of government that looked at the Schiavo case, and all six branches failed to protect life.
They are the large majority in the Senate. They COULD pass the Nuclear Option. They don't because they don't want to.
Christian pro-lifers know who has the power, and they know who is denying them the victory by choosing to do the WRONG thing on two explosive, core issues.
The spin machine is not going to be able to divert Christian anger away from the Republicans, where it belongs, to the Democrats. We already know they are evil.
We expected you to use your power to prevent the evil from doing its worse. That is why we have sent you thousands of dollars and manned the political trenches for you for 30 years. We gave you the power. We demand that you use it for what we gave it to you for. You have refused to do so. You claim you do not have the power. We reject that. You do. Don't lie to us. We are not stupid.
There is no place for you to hide.
Perhaps the economic right is thinking emotionally.
They do not like to be "threatened", and so they are digging in and becoming belligerent.
That is irrational.
We are demanding that you fulfill 30 years of promises.
It is not irrational to demand that you uphold your end of the deal. It is not irrational to become furiously angry and to abandon you as Judases and liars if you do not.
It is irrational of you to believe that you can walk out on the Christians and retain power.
And it is irrational of you to believe that Christian anger at being betrayed is not legitimate.
It is also supremely irrational of you to look at the electorate and believe that you can maintain your majority and the rest of your agenda in the next elections if you alienate the Christians now.
It's show time.
Stand and deliver and keep the Christians.
Do anything else, anything at all, and you have irrationally granted yourselves wiggle room that does not exist.
You have none. You have to act. If Terri and the Nuclear Option die, the Republican Party dies with them.
That's the cold, hard, rational reality of the situation.
Republicans have to face up to it and act rationally to save their political skins. And that means caving to the Christians this time.
Great analysis.