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Mon. Mar 28, 2005

Continuing De-Evolution

After nearly 4,000 words, I thought I might start again. Because despite the clear desires of some for this issue to quietly pass into the white noise of the Michael Jackson trial, this will linger. This was a marker moment for many, some of whom are now talking seriously (meaning, in a soon-to-be organized manner) about their political commitment to what they believe the Republican Party has become. Or how to “reel it back in.”

Because, as ugly as this has been, apparently, it almost got really out of hand:

Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo wasn’t to be removed from her hospice, a team of Florida law enforcement agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted – but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge’s order, The Miami Herald has learned.

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.

For a brief period, local police, who have officers around the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called a showdown. In the end, the state agents and the Department of Children and Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.

“We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in,” said a source with the local police.

Participants in the high-stakes test of wills, who spoke with The Miami Herald on the condition of anonymity, said they believed the standoff could ultimately have led to a constitutional crisis — and a confrontation between dueling lawmen.

“There were two sets of law enforcement officers facing off, waiting for the other to blink,” said one official with knowledge of Thursday morning’s activities. In jest, one official said local police discussed “whether we had enough officers to hold off the National Guard.”

“It was kind of a showdown on the part of the locals and the state police,” the official said. “It was not too long after that Jeb Bush was on TV saying that, evidently, he doesn’t have as much authority as people think.”

Knight Ridder: “Fla. officials’ attempt, fail to seize Schiavo”

You can also read about in back in 1988 when Rep. Tom DeLay and his family faced a decision about the life of the family patriarch. The LA Times tries to compare it to Schiavo’s situation, saying “Both stricken patients were severely brain damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without continuing medical assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be spared life sustained by machine. And neither left a living will.” Others claim the situations are entirely different (in one case it is spouse’s decision against family, in the DeLay case, the family agreed with the spouse’s decision). However, it would seem the Congressman was not only unable to draw any empathy from that experience, he went on the warpath so strongly you’d almost guess he’d never even seen such a situation.

Meanwhile in that den of liberal atheist heathens, Salt Lake City, the local paper says of Rep. Tom DeLay, “Ethically challenged leader shouldn’t hide behind God”:

Tom DeLay says he wants Terri Schiavo to live. And there is no reason to doubt that.

But it is clear that the House majority leader is not above using the suffering of a woman he has never met to promote his own, increasingly shaky, political career.

In remarks to a Washington meeting of the conservative Family Research Council last week, DeLay made it clear that his cause is God’s cause, and that those who oppose him oppose God.

The Texas Republican has gone so far as to suggest that Schiavo’s situation is a gift from God that he can use to defend himself against charges brought by his political enemies — enemies whom he all but calls, in an echo of a defensive Hillary Clinton some years ago, a vast left-wing conspiracy.

But the ethical smell around DeLay continues to get worse. The newest scandal is that he accepted expensive trips to England and South Korea paid for, in violation of House rules, by lobbyists. Those picking up the tab included registered foreign agents and domestic groups seeking to influence federal Indian gambling legislation.

Meanwhile, back in Texas, prosecutors have indicted three of DeLay’s associates on multiple charges of money laundering and taking illegal corporate contributions [...] DeLay, all the while, insists that he has done nothing wrong and that those who accuse him of ethical shortcomings are simply using personal attacks on him as a weapon to undermine the conservative causes he supports.

The Hammer, as he is known, makes a good point about the Democrats not having a coherent agenda of their own, so they talk about him. But he gives them a lot to talk about.

If conservative Republicans really want to talk about important issues, and not about Tom DeLay, they might start looking for a different leader.

And by week’s end, Rep. DeLay was trying to step out of the spotlight he’d created:

Early this week, Tom DeLay assumed an uncharacteristically visible role in the Terri Schiavo case, pressing Congress to intervene, invoking God and attacking Ms. Schiavo’s husband before television cameras and on the House floor. Now, with the prospect that she will be kept alive essentially dashed in the courts, he has slipped out of the spotlight.

Republican Congressional officials say the lower profile is partly just a reflection of the fact that Congress, having already returned once to enact a law that fought Ms. Schiavo’s death, has again departed Washington for the Easter recess. It is also, they say, a gesture of respect to a dying woman and her family, rather than an accommodation to politics.

Still, for Mr. DeLay in particular, the decision to step forward in the first place – after weeks in which he had methodically avoided television cameras as he fended off questions about his ethics – may prove to be crucial in what could turn out to be his most difficult year in Congress. While the Schiavo case may have energized his conservative supporters, Democrats and some independent analysts say, it may also have thrust him into the national consciousness at the very moment his opponents are trying to make him a symbol of Republican excess and force another ethics investigation.

New York Times: “DeLay Quietly Steps Out of the Schiavo Spotlight”

While Rep. DeLay may want to quietly back away from this now, he’s also got some ‘splainin’ to do back at the clubhouse, as many of his Republican pals in Congress want to know how the heck this blew up in their face:

The fracas over congressional involvement has taken many GOP lawmakers by surprise. Most knew little about the case and were acting at the direction of their leaders, who armed them with the simple argument that they just wanted to give Schiavo a final chance, and that they wanted to err on the side of life. But because of the rush to act and the insistent approach of the leadership, Republicans had no debate about whether their vote could be seen as federal intrusion in a family matter, or as a violation of the separation of powers between the judicial and legislative branches. Both issues are concerns of many voters responding to polls, and of some legislators themselves.

Republican leaders knew from the outset they were entering new and possibly rocky terrain. DeLay said that he told Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) two weeks ago, “We have to do something for Terri Schiavo,” but that the chairman was reluctant because, as DeLay recounted, “we don’t have a precedent for doing private bills in these matters, and he didn’t want to violate that precedent.”

The majority leader’s response to Sensenbrenner: “Be creative.”

One senior GOP lawmaker involved in the negotiations, who did not want to speak for the record, said [...] that DeLay “wanted to follow through” but added that many House Republicans were dubious and suspected that the leader’s ethics problems were a motivating factor.

Republican concerns grew, the senior House GOP lawmaker said, as a succession of federal judges, some of them conservative appointees, rejected Congress’s entreaty. “A lot of members are saying, ‘Why did you put us through this?’ ” said the lawmaker, who agreed to recount the events on the condition that he not be named.

There has been similar grumbling in the Senate, where the Schiavo effort was led by Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a former transplant surgeon who is retiring in 2006, presumably to run for president; Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a conservative Catholic who also may harbor presidential ambitions; and freshman Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.).

Washington Post: “Schiavo Case Tests Priorities Of GOP”

So either there are some Republicans remaining in Congress with some sense, or the wind has been blowing hard enough this past week that even this particularly tone-deaf Congress could see it. And maybe it’s becoming clear to them that, politically, there simply are no winners here:

Our polling shows that even white evangelical voters are divided on this issue. Many of them think the government should not be involved.

Feelings are running very high right now. If this woman is allowed to die, there’s no question there will be a big backlash, that these groups who feel that some people who are responsible for her death should be held to account.

They’re going to blame politicians. This is being made very political. And everybody’s blaming everybody else for making it political. The critics say the courts are making it political.

What the polls show is people want politics out of it. They consider this a private family matter, and anyone who appears to make this political is being held to account. The public is very angry at them.

That includes President Bush. We’ve seen his ratings decline, perhaps because of his involvement in this case. It includes Congress. It includes the governor of Florida. The conservatives say the courts have been political in this and that’s why they’re attacking them. They say this is a case of judicial activism where the judges are interfering. Everybody in this case seems to have some kind of political agenda and it’s hurting them all.

CNN: “Bill Schneider: Schiavo case ‘being made very political’”

Angry indeed. And it’s not hard to find people who’ve supported Bush who still believe there’s going to be a price paid for this, like Neal Boortz:

So, there he was … Randall Terry, the anti-abortion zealot, screaming outside of the nursing home housing Terri Schiavo. He was screaming something about “hell to pay” if Terri Schiavo dies [...] Republicans may pay a political price not because they didn’t do enough to prolong the torture of Terri Schiavo, but because they did too much.

Have you seen today’s approval ratings for President Bush? [...] This is the lowest point in his presidency. These polls are not because he hasn’t done enough in the Schiavo matter. The downtrend is because he did too much. The largest loss of support was among conservative male church-goers.

I truly believe that their control of the House of Representatives may be in jeopardy in next year’s elections. Perhaps they’ll learn from this. Maybe they’ll start dancing with who brung them for a change, and pay attention to spending and tax cuts, school choice, national defense and individual liberty.

Some lessons are just learned the hard way.

Well, that assumes that any lesson is learned at all. In some quarters, Bush and Company simply Can Do No Wrong. Like Hugh Hewitt: “Andrew Sullivan thinks there’s a ‘conservative crack-up’ underway, occasioned by disagreements within the Republican Party over the court-mandated death of Terri Schiavo. Hmmm. Let’s see. On this side, Andrew, the ABC polling team, Charles Fried and — sort of — William F. Buckley and some additional, talented essayists. On the other side —my side— the president, all of the leadership of the GOP in the House and the Senate, every possible GOP presidential candidate who has spoken on the issue, all but Boortz of the vaunted ‘Republican noise machine,’ and the rank and file.”

Heck, with not much effort, I listed a whole lot more than that the other day. And while Hewitt mentions the ABC poll in passing to denigrate it, he fails to mention the CNN poll or the CBS poll, both of which showed as much as 82% of the public was against this.

It’s notable to me that to Mr. Hewitt, Republican Advocate Nonpareil, that overwhelming public distaste is not even worthy of mention. It’s topped by “my side,” Dubya and Company.

We, The People, apparently just don’t know what’s good for us. Either that, or there’s some serious Ostrich Syndrome going on among the most ardent Republican supporters. Like Hugh.

Let me ask this. In the past three months of Congressional actions, where are “We, The People” among actions like these:

Fortune 500 companies that invested millions of dollars in electing Republicans are emerging as the earliest beneficiaries of a government controlled by President Bush and the largest GOP House and Senate majority in a half century.

MBNA Corp., the credit card behemoth and fifth-largest contributor to Bush’s two presidential campaigns, is among those on the verge of prevailing in an eight-year fight to curtail personal bankruptcies. Exxon Mobil Corp. and others are close to winning the right to drill for oil in Alaska’s wildlife refuge, which they have tried to pass for better than a decade. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., another big contributor to Bush and the GOP, and other big companies recently won long-sought protections from class-action lawsuits.

Washington Post: “Business Sees Gain In GOP Takeover”

Name me one significant bill passed for the benefit of “We, the People” by this 109th Congress.

There’s also interesting interaction in the blogs. At some sites that have built up a very loyal and vocal right wing audience in their comments sections, that audience is finding that their “host” has departed from their party line. And at times the “audience” has been pretty ugly about it. The pure hatred that people emit in the name of God never ceases to amaze me.

Some preachers are willing to tell a judge “it might be easier for all of us” if he left the church (because religion, church, and preaching is about taking the easiest path, right?), while others will condemn a preacher for his beliefs: “Some of you have questioned whether I am truly Christian because of my position on the Terri Schiavo case. This speaks volumes because it is not I or my ideological allies who are casting people into the outer darkness because they disagree. The speed at which some of you have reached to condemn me — in the most literal way, since as a not-true-Christian I am obviously Hellbound — reveals much more about your spiritual condition than mine.”

Michele asks, “Who’s behaving badly here? Who is making death threats to judges, throwing their kids out to the wolves to get arrested, sending horrible emails to people who disagree with them, calling us nazis and Hitlers and killers, claiming that we want to kill the disabled and meek and that only good Christians can understand what’s at stake here? Or that if we disagree with you that means we must be ugly liberals at heart or you start attacking us in other ways, dragging people’s sexuality into the fight?”

But I have to give Bill Quick credit for trying to take all this negativity and do something with it:

The Republicans are no longer the party of small, limited government, fiscal sanity, states and individual rights, and the Constitution. In their own way, they have become as bloated, hypocritical, invasive, and spendthrift as much of the worst the Democrats have to offer.

If you think there must be some alternative, I am with you, and I would like to find one. That means we have to create an interest group of moderates and libertarians who become crucial to the balance of power. If we hold the keys to the electability of candidates from the right and the left, then both sides must listen to us.

Am I suggesting the formation of a new party? No, not at the moment. But we do have tools available to us, most especially the Internet and blogs. Moveon.org, as much as I dislike its goals, has perfected these as a method of exerting enormous influence. It has, in effect, taken over the machinery of the Democratic party. What they did, we can do as well, and I am proposing that we do it.

If you have suggestions how best we can proceed, please outline them in the comments, or email me. Citizens’ movements have a long and honorable history in this country, and it is easier than ever before to start one. Let’s hear from you.

So, there you go, Republican Leadership. Look at what you’ve started. It was damn ugly to watch, but if the result is a nascent coalition of moderates and libertarians, then from my personal point of view, it was a very good week’s work.