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Posted on 11/02/2006 5:23:50 AM PST by 8mmMauser
Republican gubernatorial front-runner Charlie Crist says he was perfectly clear in opposing governmental intervention in the Terri Schiavo case.
He spoke out loudly.
And he was silent.
Loudly silent.
The day after limping through a tough nationally televised debate, the Republican attorney general wanted to talk about his plans to slash taxes. Instead reporters questioned him about his debate assertion that, “Yes, I did’’ speak out against Congress trying to force the reinsertion of the severely brain-damaged woman’s feeding tube in 2005.
Crist did not publicly express his opposition to the Schiavo intervention until April 2006, more than a year after the Pinellas woman’s death. But he maintained on Tuesday that he forcefully expressed his opposition from the start.
“I spoke loudly,” Crist said in Tallahassee. “I think it’s important that when issues like that come up and you believe that government is the appropriate place for it that you act that out, and you walk the walk, and don’t just talk the talk.’’
The attorney general noted that his office “by not going to court and pushing the agenda on that issue, that was speaking out louder than anybody else did in Florida.”
This is one of many issues — from insurance reform to abortion and civil unions — where Crist has been accused of ambiguity or trying please all sides.
Contrary to his comments Tuesday, during the Republican gubernatorial primary in August he stressed to the weekly newspaper of the Florida Baptist Convention that his office helped the governor’s office with legal work to keep Schiavo alive, even though he personally had qualms.
“I don’t remember that, but I’ll check on it and see,” Crist said when asked about that interview with the Florida Baptist Witness.
Gov. Jeb Bush came to his would-be successor’s defense. “He spoke out to me,” Bush told reporters. Crist, however, said he never directly talked to Bush.
There are few issues in the political realm so black and white as the Terri Schiavo case. People either supported the state and federal government intervening to keep her alive or they didn’t.
But Crist is the second statewide candidate recently to face questions about how he acted during the Schiavo end-of-life controversies that erupted in 2003 in the Legislature and in 2005 in both the Legislature and Congress.
Democratic Attorney General candidate Walter “Skip” Campbell, a state senator from Broward County, has been on the defensive this week for having voted to keep Schiavo alive and later criticizing the governmental intervention. Crist’s involvement in the Schiavo case may be the only common ground between the Schindler family, Terri
Schiavo’s parents and siblings who fought to keep her alive, and her husband, Michael Schiavo, who insisted his wife did not want to be kept alive in a persistent vegetative state. Both sides have criticized Crist.
“When he said in that debate that he’s going to be a leader, my heart dropped. He’s not a leader, he’s a follower,’’ Michael Schiavo said Tuesday. “If he really wanted to stand up he would have said, 'No, this is wrong. The government should stay out of this.’ ... Charlie Crist did not say a word, he was nowhere to be found. He’s a coward.’’
Terri Schiavo’s father, Bob Schindler, wrote an essay in August accusing Crist of snubbing the family’s pleas for him to help their efforts. “Florida Atty. Gen. Charlie Crist let my daughter die. He had it within his authority to save her life, but he turned a blind eye to her suffering,’’ Schindler wrote.
The Florida Democratic Party issued a release saying Crist “lied” about his role in the Schiavo case, but at a brief campaign stop at Arco-Iris restaurant in Tampa on Tuesday, Davis would only say that Crist “misrepresented his position.”
“I was up fighting George Bush and the entire United States Congress, both political parties, and Charlie Crist was unwilling to take a position,” Davis said.
Davis, trailing in polls and campaign money, is hoping his debate performance Monday night will cut Crist’s advantages. No statewide viewership numbers were available Tuesday, but in the Tampa Bay area about 152,000 households tuned in — a ratings jump for that time slot on WFLA — and that doesn’t include those who watched on MSNBC.
- Tallahassee bureau chief Steve Bousquet and staff writer Alex Leary contributed to this report. Adam C. Smith can be reached at asmith@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8241.\
Before the Republican Party fell into a coma, I think I heard it say that if it were in power for more than two terms or twelve years, we should take it off life support.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." -- Lord Acton
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." -- Douglas Adams
"You can't use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!" -- Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (quoting an unnamed Senator)
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." -- John Adams
"I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate." -- John Adams
"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." -- John Quincy Adams
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds…" -- Samuel Adams
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." -- Aesop
"He's a politician. That's a notch below child molester." -- Woody Allen, Annie Hall
"Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means ... the need to be left. I am driven to grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics." -- Kingsley Amis
"When I have to choose between voting for the people or the special interests, I always stick with the special interests. They remember. The people forget." -- Senator Henry Fountain Ashurst (D-AZ)
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so the pagan won. three cheers!
Did the notes on this identify the other two in the photo? They have to be liberals. Liberals always look SO happy sucking up to communists -- even little league communists like Ortega. Communists are what liberals they want to be when they grow up.
OK, the others are Sen. Tom Harkin and his wife. We owe Harkin kind words -- at least once -- because he spoke up for Terri. We do not owe him any admiration and this photo shows why.
>> are what liberals... want to be
If I took my helpless newborn and stopped feeding her, would it be a issue for the legislature to intervine?? I THINK SO........
Looks like they will seize the mandate T'wit. I guess the first thing on the agenda will be to vacate Iraq. I was thinking about what date they would like that to take place. Ho Chi Minh's birthday is May 19th. I don't know where the current level of funding gets us to though. It would be hard to alter that.
On a similar note, if your kid has cancer, the Courts will tell you how it should be treated if you are not interested in chemotherapy and radiation.
Plus, I do want to include my favorite question because our visitors can't answer it (and have never even tried). Shucks, Michael Schiavo has never answered it honestly either. You know, the one asking innocently, now that bulimia has been ruled out by the autopsy report... how did Terri end up face down on the floor in the hall, in cardiac arrest and nearly dead, right after Michael got home from work late that Saturday night?
You don't suppose they were having a little domestic tiff that day, do you? It might have gotten out of control.
Isn't that John Kerry doctrine? "I voted to send them surplus government cheese before I voted to stab them in the back." A lot of people could die from this, not least right here in the emasculated U. S. of A.
They are doing a great job of brainwashing Americans, I must admit. Look at all the Floridians who just got a complete wash and wax.
Maybe he wants everybody's heart because he doesn't have one and his brain is on loan from nbc's The Apprentice.
Hayworth's gone and Weldon's gone. They are patriots but they lost.
Don't know what I can say to say that we don't deserve it. The same scenario occurred in Viet Nam and Cambodia. When they were killed, nobody here gave a shit.
Charlie Crist luvs judges because they are lawyers first and foremost. He also luvs democrats and foreigners. We are blankety-blanked.
Dick Armey was bashing Terri Schiavo on all the cable shows one night last week. It was disgusting. He said that the GOP had been overtaken by the religious right and the Schiavo issue was just one example.
Yes, unfortunately, I am right. TERRI SCHIAVO WAS LYNCHED.
Did you have the hiccups? 205, etc.?
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