This thread is NOVEMBER TERRI LEGACY DAILIES BTTT
We carry on in her memory until people wake up to reality.
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.\
This thread is NOVEMBER TERRI LEGACY DAILIES BTTT
We carry on in her memory until people wake up to reality.
Yes they do. Why I could hear all of the school teachers today telling all of their students what a great day in America this is.
No lawyer, can't appear in court, not much chance anyone would have I would say.
*^%$#&!!&$, no! Sheesh, don't waste your life :-)
I listen to talk radio when I can, but I have it down to a science turning off AP or ABC news so fast I don't have to listen to even one ugly word ooze out of their diseased minds and dribble down their slimy uvulas.
"We" doesn't compute. Groups are fiction. Only individuals have moral responsibility, so only individuals can be guilty (or innocent). I, for one, don't feel one darn bit guilty for these bad turns of events. Nor should you, of course.
Freepers in general, and certainly friends of Terri, have devoted our energies over countless hours to get the truth told at last, and to seek justice. We have no apology to make to Democrats who twisted the issues. We had none to make, either, to the John Kerrys of an earlier generation who helped the Communists take over in Vietnam and Cambodia, and who did nothing for the refugees and boat people. The Fondas and Kerrys are the ones with blood on their hands.
If the government wasn't going to intervene in preventing her husband from letting her die, who WAS going to intervene? As it was, it was the government who ORDERED her to be killed. So, the government, as well as her husband, were responsible for her death.
Your thinking is 'way too advanced for Charlie Crist :-)
You waxed eloquent yesterday, and I remained quiet, relatively, on line, at least. Local wildlife here near the woods may have a different take.
May our dismay turn to resolve as we understand the manifesto of the left contains as one of its firm features the push of the euthanasia agenda as per Terri.
And....their useful idiots, the trembling RINO's who went limp in our arms, I cannot forget.
Now it is the Terri Intervention (pandering)...
It appears as if the Terri Factor is redefined, as if it were a non-conservative act of the Republicans to try to save Terri through the methods they used and by projection, to save her innocent life at all. It sounds as if the act of trying to save an innocent life is subsumed into a greater wrong of using the big government to bully. This is George Will, but George Orwell must be amazed. Because of this interpretation, the voices of the "right" can support the desires of the bioethickists and get the euthanasia show on the road post haste, squishing embryos and snuffing the infirm with impunity.
Of course the election-turning issue was not that $223 million bridge in Alaska, or even the vice of which it is emblematic -- incontinent spending by a Republican-controlled Congress trying to purchase permanent power. Crass spending (the farm and highway bills, the nearly eightfold increase in the number of earmarks since 1994) and other pandering (e.g., the Terri Schiavo intervention) have intensified as Republicans' memories of why they originally sought power has faded.
Sorry about that, Republicans, but you had it coming
8mm
Sarah Chamberlain, the partnership's director, complained that GOP leaders had rejected popular causes such as the minimum wage, embryonic stem cell research, and lobbying reforms while ignoring health care issues that did not involve Terri Schiavo. The result, she said, was that moderate voters in the suburbs saw Republicans as extremists.
GOP pointing fingers -- at itself
8mm
That capital slowly drained away with an ill-fated fight on Social Security, a furor over the government's mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, an aggressive intervention for conservative causes like the right-to-die case of Terri Schiavo, and, more than anything, pollsters said, the war in Iraq.
President facing a new reality... He has to talk to liberals now, too
8mm
The condescending far left pats us on the head and scolds us, exhorts us to accept their new definitions.
If the Republicans lose control of the Senate as well, which appears likely, it will be because one of the incumbent Republican senators deserves to lose. Virginia’s George Allen revealed himself as a bigot and a bully with his taunting of a darked-skinned worker for the opposing Democrat’s campaign. Rick Santorum, one of the Senate’s most conservative members, was tossed out. Santorum led the crackpot Republican crusade to impose evangelical religious values on government that culminated in congressional intervention in whether to remove life support from the brain-dead Terri Schiavo.
Dems didn't win, GOP lost election
Jim Baker, for goodness sake! Are we to roll over like a submissive puppy and expose our bellies?
8mm
He happened to leave Washington last year for the infamous vote to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case, conveniently missing the roll call. Not an act of great political courage, but a braver stand than that of Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who groveled before the extremists and voted yes. The moderate Democrat coasted to re-election Tuesday. The moderate Republican got popped in the mouth.
Moderate Shaw takes the fall for extreme regime
8mm
The patronizing far left warns us again, to accept actions like their killing of Terri "or else".
In fact, there is a theory that Santorum lost this race in 2005, with his antics over Terri Schiavo, with the nonsense over his residency, with his book and its Cro-Magnon moments.
Tom Ferrick Jr. | Go away, voters told Santorum
8mm
There is another factor the Dims didn't think about. With the power comes the blame. Everybody knows they won and everybody will hold them responsible for whatever goes wrong now. Given the nature of government, things will go wrong every day and get worse by the hour. In a word, they have to play defense in a game that is impossible to win.
For our purposes, it's much more fun to write the editorials against the scoundrels in office than to have to suck up to them. That's why Rush Limbaugh said yesterday he felt liberated. That's why I felt more than the usual pangs when the Clintons finally vacated the White House. They had been SUCH lovely targets.
Because it involves deeply held religious beliefs, abortion is the hot-button social issue that least lends itself to compromise, which is why the debate seems endless.
Most Americans want abortions to be available, safe and rare. As with the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case, they resent efforts by the most fervid "pro-life" forces to enlist government to impose their morality on everyone else.
8mm
..........................
A Democrat once joked that Charlie Crist was the only politician he knew who could take a principaled stand on both sides of the same issue.
He did it with abortion. He did it with Terri Schiavo. And he did it with civil unions.
Some Republicans had their own joke about Charlie.
The joke went: Spend five minutes with Charlie Crist and you will be convinced that he will make a great governor. Spend a half an hour with him and you will be ready to vote for anyone else.
DeFede: Hoping That Crist Surprises Us As Governor
8mm
"The Terri Factor continues..."
No it doesn't. Crist won.
"Our Party's Congressional leaders drove over the bridge to nowhere and left their principles behind," said Sammon. "The Republicans lost touch with the issues that matter to mainstream voters. The American people lost confidence in the GOP's ability to govern because of misplaced priorities and ethical scandals. The Party should've focused on core kitchen table issues that impact voters' lives. Instead of cutting spending, cleaning up lobbying rules, reforming immigration laws, or balancing the budget, GOP leaders catered to the fringe on wedge issues such as the anti-marriage amendment and the Terri Schiavo case," said Sammon.
LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS BLAST SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES FOR CAUSING DEFEAT IN HOUSE
8mm
Yes, it does. The far left keep using it.
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