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.\
Today, Nov. 12, 2006, impeachment is as critical a top priority for most Americans just as Congress intervening to keep Terri Schiavo connected to life-support was last year.
Newsweek Poll Gives Bush New Low 31 Percent Rating
8mm
GAG ME!!!!!!!! McCain and Crist???? Make that Cain and the anti-Crist!!!!
Charlie Crist is another splendid example why I never invest my hopes in political solutions. The game is crooked. Even the best of men will be corrupted in time, and Charlie is not the sort to wait around. The only thing politicians can do for us is to undo the meddling of previous politicians -- and they scarcely ever succeed in even that simple chore.
Religion on the Way Out in Europe
8mm
Another reminder that what we naively call news media are leftist street theater deployed to corrupt public opinion. Reporters are the spiritual disciples of Abbie Hoffman.
Arrogance happened a year or so ago when politicians flew around the country trying to save the life of Terry Schiavo. Most people felt great ambivalence about whether or not to remove the feeding tube. We didn't need our political leaders pandering to family members and extreme religionists in a well publicized effort to save her life. This exercise went bad because these politicians looked arrogant. They looked arrogant because they acted like they knew what God wanted them to do. That doesn't set very well with voters, to be given the impression that their leaders think they speak for God. That may be a major problem for the mullahs of Baghdad.
8mm
Most Americans didn't hold with the ultraconservative social agenda laid out by those Bible-thumpers. No matter their religious views, most voters recoiled from the public spectacle that leading GOP politicians made of Terri Schiavo's private tragedy.
Conservatives' tenuous bonds finally unravel
8mm
THE Church of England has joined one of Britain’s royal medical colleges in calling for legal euthanasia of seriously disabled newborn babies. Church leaders want doctors to be given the right to withhold treatment from seriously disabled newborn babies in exceptional circumstances.
Their call, overriding the presumption that life should be preserved at any cost, follows that of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology, revealed in The Sunday Times last week.
Church supports baby euthanasia
8mm
It's a sure bet this dreadnought doesn't have an answer to the #1 question -- how did Terri go from healthy to face-down on the hallway floor, in cardiac arrest, brain damaged and nearly dead, right after her husband came home late one Saturday night?
/sarcasm, mostly :-)
Who should our political leaders pander to, in-laws? Strangers? Foreigners? Why NOT families? What is wrong with trying to save an innocent woman's life? That is lawmakers' constitutional duty! It's in the Declaration and the Constitution. To neglect that duty is impeachable (and that's in the Constitution, too.)
A real nincompoop, this one.
Florida needs every penny it can get its hands on to pay for free medical care for their illegals.
It can't afford to keep American citizens alive in nursing homes.
You are right. I'm so sorry for my pro-life silliness. Saving the alligators takes money too. And building new state parking lots. I mean, the average citizen won't even be able to afford recreational drugs we keep letting old folks survive.
In the mold of Barak Obama.
cc is so stupid. if the gop goes there, they are dumber than he is. The rnc believes their own spin. Their spin is b.s.
Media propaganda working with the u.s. govt. killed Terri Schiavo for a cheating husband. It was a hit job by the courts.
Media propaganda working with the u.s. govt. killed Terri Schiavo for a cheating husband. It was a hit job by the courts.
I was at the courthouse the other day. I went through the doors and all I could think was that "They killed Terri." There are now tv monitors at the ceiling with female (former local anchors) on a continuous feed yakking about the court system. It's so 1984 here. "Fear Greer" is not just a slogan somebody here made up.
If Michael Steele replaces Mehlman, I wonder if Steele will protect or abandon disabled Americans the way Mehlman did.
(I keep getting emails from people who say they didn't help the gop because the gop didn't help Terri).
When the anti-life for Terri politicians grant to illegals citizenship and Terri haters lose their jobs to illegals, then they'll understand the price they paid for starving and dehydrating our friend Terri Schiavo.
They won't get it until it hits them personally. It's supposed to be liberty and justice for all (not just everyone in the U.S.A. except Terri Schindler Schiavo).
The woman was and is a fraud. I don't know what her experience is in prosecuting a war. She prosecuted Terri. Maybe she'll starve and dehydrate the terrorists?????
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