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Republican Leadership Trying to Dodge Backlash While Wingers Throw Gasoline on the Fire
Posted by KTK

The Republican leadership has been backpedaling like mad since the first polls showed widespread opposition to their meddling in the Terri Schiavo fiasco.

George Bush made a great show of travelling to Washington to sign “Terri’s Act” overturning an established court ruling, but barely 24 hours later announced there was nothing more to be done. (In fact, Congress could have - but made no effort to - pass a revised version of the bill stipulating that a petition for a temporary injunction must be granted; the federal district judge had explicitly noted that Congress had debated doing so, but had not, in its original bill, and cited this as his justification for imposing the test that doomed the Schindlers’ motion. Bush made no effort to encourage Congress to pass an effective version of the bill he had theatrically demanded they pass just a day before; Frist and other Congressional leaders also dropped the issue like a hot potato after the judge drew them a road map to the outcome they had said they wanted.) Jeb Bush appointed the ludicrous Dr. William Cheshire to cook up an “evaluation” whose conclusion was foreknown (and did not, apparently, require a physical examination of the patient); when that “evaluation” was rejected by the state court judge, and with public opinion turning against him, Jeb announced that he had no more options. (In fact, the Florida legislature was considering a terrible bill that would have invalidated oral advance directives for everyone in the entire state, forever, in order to override Terri Schiavo’s expressed wishes - Jeb offered no support and the bill, thank God, failed by 3 votes. Jeb did make a move to have state police “seize” Terri Schiavo, but it fizzled within hours and was largely regarded as a publicity stunt.) Since then, Congressional leaders have been eager to blame the courts for an outcome that was (a) morally right, and (b) legally inevitable, while trying to minimize their own ignorant, incompetent, and dangerous role in the disaster. Unfortunately, their crazier colleagues are making it hard for them.

Bill Frist is desperately trying to escape the fallout as Democrats and the public take notice of his hypocrisy in making the Schiavo situation a “culture of life” demonstration case while cutting Medicare, reducing patients’ rights to compensation for malpractice, and ignoring the healthcare-access crisis. The unprecedented assault on personal autonomy that Frist spearheaded in the Schiavo case, along with the anti-judicial rhetoric of many Republicans, is also throwing the fight over federal court nominations into sharper relief; having now seen what the Republicans expect federal courts to do to people’s rights, and for what idiosyncractic religious reasons, and having seen how Republicans react when the courts are legally unable to do their bidding, the question of who gets on those courts and what ideological leanings they have looks more more worrisome. Frist is now fighting a defensive action, making the absurd claim that his, and his Republican colleagues’, behavior in the Schiavo case has nothing to do with the question of how the federal courts should be staffed:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Tuesday that federal judges’ rejection of efforts by Congress to keep Terri Schiavo alive will not affect the escalating dispute between Democrats and Republicans over President Bush’s judicial nominees.

“I don’t associate the two issues directly,'’ Frist told reporters.

Some of his colleagues haven’t gotten the message, though.

Schiavo died last Thursday despite attempts by President Bush, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Congress to block removal of her feeding tube. Her parents fought to keep her alive, saying she was severely disabled but not without hope. Her husband said she had never wanted to be kept alive artificially, and state and federal courts all sided with him.

Now, conservatives are mounting a campaign against what they call activist federal judges. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and other conservatives who advocated for Schiavo have planned a conference on Thursday and Friday called “Confronting The Judicial War On Faith'’ with the lawyer for Schiavo’s parents.

Now that public opinion has revealed widespread fear that the Republicans will trample on people’s power to make their own decisions in the most important areas of their life, and as the link between autonomy in end-of-life issues and autonomy in other issues such as abortion and birth control, as well as the link between “culture of life” rhetoric and regressive policies in science, healthcare, and elsewhere, have been made explicit - by Bush, the GOP, and the coalition of pro-life extremists who hijacked the Schindlers’ cause - the question of federal court appointments is inescapably a choice between more Schiavo cases in the future, and the survival of the Constitution as a bulwark of citizens’ rights. And that fact is one the GOP leadership does not want emphasized - which is why Tom Delay’s threats, Rick Santorum’s call for Congressional action against independent judges, and now talk of “war” between the law and the religious right are making the GOP’s hostility to the Constitution and the people clearer than their leadership would like.

April 5th, 2005 General, Politics, Legal Issues, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Health | 2 comments