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.\
He may be able to run some day, but not soon.
Democrats will NEVER vote for another Bush to be POTUS and I have a feeling that a lot of Republicans feel the same way.
She knew what to do about it, too -- sent her troops into his office that night and heisted his files. Nothing like tampering with the evidence and obstructing justice, eh?
LOTS more skeletons in Miz Hill's closet :-) I hope she runs.
{{Raises hand, smiles, nods vigorously}}
Who (what) is "House"? Not a trick question, I don't watch TV except for Dancing with the Stars.
House is a diagnostician who takes on hard cases. He believes to treat fiirst and ask questions later. If it doesn't work, try something else.
House is a popular show on the Fox Network. It's regular slot is 9:00 on Tuesday.
He is also a very obnoxious maverick both hated and admired.
Some data:
1) In World War II, we were allied with the Communists and fought against the Communists' bitter enemies.
2) World War II was a good war. Everybody supported it.
3) In Vietnam, we fought against the Communists.
4) Vietnam was a bad war. Everybody was against it.
Essay question: Deduce the loyalties of American media.
Nobody on either side of the aisle denied that Terri had severe brain damage. People on our side did -- and do -- wonder what injured her brain? This question obviously shapes our feelings about all subsequent concerns in the case. (Which is why the Left ducks the question 100% of the time.) If Terri Schiavo (as seems almost certain) was the victim of domestic violence; if she was a Nicole Simpson or a Laci Peterson, nobody could make a case that her assailant ought to be able to use the courts to finish her off. It is intellectually obscene.
OK, I give up. Is it a trick question???
;)
And now we have the Anglican hierarchs saying it's OK to snuff babies who do not live up to somebody's specifications.
It won't be long before the old certainty, "There'll always be an England," is replaced by "Allahu Akbar."
Soon, they will start doing "cost and efficiency" studies and some "esteemed bioethicist" will propose something along the lines of Zyklon B.
:-)
I remember Albert Jay Nock quoting a credible source who related to him, matter-of-factly, that the press could drum up war fever in America in a matter of hours. I'm not sure when -- maybe the 1930s or early 40s? Could have been referring to World War I, I imagine. Nock died in 1945, so at least we know this was no later than WW II.
It was ever thus. You can find similar stories in the Old Testament :-) Today the Mullahs stir war fever in their mosques and you watch surplus young men, faces contorted with hate, chanting death slogans and waving guns. It is SO easy to turn them into would-be martyrs.
Well, Zyklon B WAS chosen for its humaneness as well as its 100% kill rate. Better than Grape Kool-Aid too. If we use lethal injection, as with those 31 elderly patients stranded by Katrina, it is still in the same great tradition.
I don't think Eichmann was all that concerned with humaneness. He was under tremendous pressure to increase efficiency and it was essential that he do it without using bullets.
O.J. Simpson talks about the murders
Yoohoo, Jonathan Alter. Michael Schiavo could be next. He's been lying longer than O.J. He could break any day. You and all the pointy-heads who bought into his cheap hustle are the ones whose reputation will be tarred. Think John Henry Abbott, championed by Norman Mailer, a wife-stabber for whom Susan Sarandon named one of her kids; or murderer Edgar Smith, championed by Bill Buckley, of all people; or Leonard Bernstein throwing cocktail parties for the Black Panthers; or orchestrated leftist mewling on behalf of such convicted murderers as Mumia Abu Jamal and Tookie Williams.
It all comes out, Mr. Alter, it all comes out.
What, then, do you think Zyklon B was without cost? Pol Pot armed his youth brigades with stout sticks to beat political enemies and their own families to death. They didn't pay one penny for those sticks. Now THAT is socialist efficiency of the highest order.
The following is SATIRE, so don't you leftwingers get any notions about borrowing this idea.
The next administration could start a new American youth corps to serve the nation. We could call them Pol Pot's Perky Hospice Helpers and equip them with baseball bats. That way they could hold down the Useless Eater problem AND get in some batting practice. The corps should be mandatory, especially for editors of the Harvard Crimson.
End of /satire.
Tidal wave?? I thought it was normal to lose some seats in the mid-terms?
Somebody tell Jeb Bush that Terri's still dead. So's the chance of me ever voting for him.
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