Posted on 03/24/2005 11:02:42 AM PST by Destro
Posted on Wed, Mar. 23, 2005
GOP leaders unlikely to pursue new avenues to keep Schiavo alive
BY JEFF ZELENY
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - President Bush and congressional leaders said Wednesday they had exhausted their options and could find no new political avenues to prolong the life of Terri Schiavo.
"Now, we'll watch the courts make its decisions," Bush said at a news conference in Texas. "But we looked at all options from the executive branch perspective."
The president's brevity on the subject - devoting only a few moments to an issue that had overshadowed other domestic issues for days - suggested Republicans had decided to not aggressively pursue other alternatives or try to change public opinion in the case of the severely brain-damaged woman.
A CBS News poll released Wednesday showed that 82 percent of Americans believe neither Congress nor the president should have intervened. And among people who describe themselves as evangelicals, more than two-thirds of respondents said Bush and lawmakers should stay out of the case.
As criticism mounted from some strict conservatives over the decision of fellow Republicans to inject Congress into a state's rights issue, Bush defended the legislation, saying the government "ought to err on the side of life, which we have."
Still, the White House said explicitly the administration had no intention of taking the Schiavo case any further.
"There really are not other legal options available to us," said spokesman Scott McClellan.
The House Government Reform Committee canceled a hearing, which had been hastily arranged as a means to stop Schiavo's feeding tube from being removed. While Republicans planned to file another appeal when the Schiavo case reached the Supreme Court, Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said lawmakers would not become deeply involved.
For days, Republicans have dismissed suggestions that their intervention in the case was rooted in politics, particularly to mollify anti-abortion and other social conservative groups. "The legal and political issues may be complicated, but the moral ones are not," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said last weekend.
But an audiotape obtained by CNN on Wednesday, featuring a speech by DeLay to the Family Research Council, offered another view. He said the case could be used to rally conservatives.
"One thing God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo," DeLay said, "to elevate the visibility of what is going on in America."
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(Chicago Tribune correspondent John Biemer contributed to this report.)
You and I are on the same page w/this!
"You, sir or madam, are an idiot."
No, I assure you I am not.
I am telling you like it is.
The Republican leadership has put the party into a jam dive this week over two extremely important life issues.
Terry Schiavo is the most obvious, the but the retreat on the nuclear option is the most serious.
Republicans like you seem to be putting your fingers in your ears and shouting "La la la, I can't hear you!", which at least is true: you're not hearing us.
The pro-lifers feel betrayed, our whole agenda coming apart in one week. The consequences of that for the whole Republican movement are disastrous. There is no victory for anybody if this nonsense continues. The Republican leadership has got to act, quickly, to stave off a crisis.
That's the way it is.
Calling me an idiot is not going to change the fact that that's the way it is.
Are all pro-lifers idiots for being horrified at Executive inaction, and horrified that the Republican Senators are waffling on the nuclear option?
What is idiotic about us?
This is a reasonable reaction to seeing people who have the power refuse to use it to carry out the agenda they were elected to carry out.
If it is unreasonable to demand that, fine, I'm an idiot.
A voting, contributing, party organizing idiot.
Along with a lot of other broken-hearted Christian pro-life idiots who have sweated blood for THIRTY YEARS to help get this party where it is, only to have it turn away from using its power to do right when in the clutch.
Yeah, we're all a bunch of idiot dumbasses.
Who needs us?
Because this 'Hail Mary' pass by Delay so massively failed I am betting his days are numbered in the Senate.
Are all those subpoenas to Terri Schiavo and her relatives meaningless?
A "little judge" from a state local court stoop up to Congress, and Congress blinked. Am I missing something here? How doesn't Congress vote to hold the state judge in contempt?
Why happened to Delay's threat?
DeLay Pledges Contempt Charge for Terri JudgeHouse Majority Leader Tom DeLay pledged Friday to hold Florida state judge George Greer in contempt of Congress for ignoring a congressional subpoena for Terri Schiavo's testimony, saying, "No little judge sitting in a state district court in Florida is going to usurp the authority of Congress."
"The Congress will pursue this, if we have to hold him in contempt of Congress," DeLay told radio host Sean Hannity.
"How many abortions are going to be performed because we wasted our shot at the nuclear option for this?"
False dichotomy. There is no election until 2006. The Republicans have the power to execute the nuclear option AND do this. The only thing stopping them in either case is...those same Republicans themselves. They can do both.
They are CHOOSING, this week, to do neither.
Fateful choice for those babies you mentioned, and Terri Schiavo.
You postulate "either, or", but the Republicans have the power to make it "both, and". The price of doing so? Some stormy weather for awhile, maybe.
That didn't stop pressing for capital gains and dividends cuts, the elimination of the estate tax, or social security privatization. It didn't stop the prosecution of the war. The Republicans have shown themselves fearless and willing to court negative opinion often, whenever they want to, whenever they CARE.
The lesson being drawn by waffling on the nuclear option AND allowing Terri to die is that the Republicans don't care ENOUGH to risk their popularity on this, but DO care enough about financial issues to risk their popularity on those.
Idiots like me (per Wolfstar) are so stupid we actually connect those dots.
The Congress passed a law asking teh Feds to review the case - the Feds did and upheld the case. End of story.
Yes, egg all over their faces.
Kinda fittin' for Easter, isn't it?
No, they don't. They HAD the option--but the less-than-100%-perfect Republicans were on board only with some misgivings, and they've now decided that they're not on board after this farce. Now they don't have 51 votes.
When you are trying to sell something to someone, it's probably a good idea to convince them that you're sane and sober-minded. The Terribots managed to convince the less-than-100%-perfect Republicans that they were neither.
"Enjoy your time in the Wilderness and the death of your pro-life aspirations."
We have been in the wilderness since 1973.
And now, we are being kept there because a large Republican majority in the Senate is apparently not going to do the right thing (just like they didn't on Specter).
They could still, and that will be a relief. But this week inspires no confidence.
I trust that you will enjoy the time in the wilderness with us. Because, guess what, the Republican economic agenda cannot survive if Republicans do not control Congress, and Republicans cannot control Congress if they cannot keep the economic Republicans and the pro-life Republicans in the same tent.
You guys are hellbent on showing us the door to the wilderness this week. But we already live there.
If you persist on this course, you'll be moving into the tent next to us.
We are shooting into a circle at each other.
To stop it, all the Republicans need to do is to use their large majority in the Senate (10% majority) to pass the nuclear option and get the judges they've been promising for years.
Why is it such a ridiculous thing to demand that your politicians do what they promised to?
Put the shoe on the other foot. Suppose Bush and Congress decided to up the marginal tax rates back up to Clinton levels and put the capital gains and dividends and estate taxes back in place, and oh-by-the-way, impose a sales tax too. Would you feel, perhaps, a LITTLE BIT betrayed?
Or would you whistle past the graveyard and say "Well, they're still Republicans, and that's what's important?"
This isn't hard.
Pull the damn plane out of the jam dive by standing up for life LIKE YOU PROMISED TO in the past, 9 elections.
Jeez.
I believe he did & thumbed his nose at Delay, congress & W.
As a Christian and a Republican activist I too feel the Fratricide that is going on here and in our country. People who one one hand assert that they are Ambassadors for Christ, have used the vilest terms and borne false witness against other conservatives and Christians. Demagoguing the local Bishop even became fashionable. Or grabbing a gun and wasting Michael. All in God's name! And other FReepers let 'em get away with it.
I'm not read to write my opus, but I'm no longer going to attend the March For Justice II. FR is now a different place for me....
You said what I've thought all along about fellow Freepers.
The threats to Michael Schivao's life.
YET profess to saving life.
Methinks they speak w/forked tongues.
Nope. You are telling it like you FEEL it is.
Re the so-called nuclear option. Personally, I'd rather see them return to true filibusters. Bring in the cots and keep everyone in session until the filibuster is broken. That's the honest way to do it.
As for the rest of it, take a chill pill, because you are, indeed, being an idiot. Betrayed? The entire legislative and executive branches of both the Florida and federal governments has tried to accommodate you people. They have gone WAY beyond in an effort to accommodate your point of view.
You are now demanding that the President and/or the governor of Florida betray their oaths of office, initiate severe national and state constitutional crises, and break the law in order to accommodate you.
You hypocrites make me sick. Why Schiavo? Hmmm... Why aren't you similarly screaming about every single case like this in the nation? Never remove life support measures from anyone under any circumstances, no matter how cruel, how inhumane, how unmerciful it would be to leave them hooked up. Set yourselves up as the god you profess to speak for, and try to never let anyone die under any circumstances. Call in the National Guard every time someone pulls the plug or removes feeding tubes.
Heck, why stop with the National Guard?! As long as you're throwing away every shred of constitutional government, throw away Posse Comitatus and call in the army.
Better yet, call in the militia that keeps saying it's going to go protect our borders (but instead retreats like cowards to remote places). Get them to surround the hospice, put guns to the heads of the doctors, and put the feeding tube back in.
How dare you whine about feeling betrayed, you ungrateful twit. I didn't see the President of the United States and the Congress of the United States disrupt their entire schedules, fly back to Washington, pass emergency legislation (and spend a lot of taxpayers money in the process) to represent my views. They represented your views.
Horse puckey!!!
"We had an opportunity to get the nuclear option BEFORE we committed political capital to this effort. Now, we don't.
In short, we f***ed up, bigtime. We focused on one unwinnable fight so that we could lose the entire war."
Hogwash.
You need "political capital" to convince members of the other party to come over and help you on this thing or that thing. Bush needs to expend political capital, for example, to get Social Security reform.
But the Nuclear Option is something within the power of the Republican Party, alone, acting all by itself, with 55 Senators, or 51 of those 55, to do.
The Republican Party has run as the pro-life party for 30 years. Are we now expected to have to expend "political capital" to get REPUBLICANS to vote the platform they have campaigned on?
Apparently you think so.
I think that's a dodge.
Maybe I'm just all alone, a crazed person who does not want to see an innocent woman die in agony and the fact of that associated political turmoil to be used as an EXCUSE, for that is all it is, on the part of the Republicans to not vote according to their own CAUCUS.
55 Senators are Republicans.
Three are RINOs.
That leaves 52.
It takes 51.
So, explain to me how the brouhaha in Florida makes the Republicans unable to vote in their own caucus for their own platform.
On second thought, don't bother.
Really, it's not worth the effort.
Crazed pro-life idiots like me are not going to listen to it anyway.
We are going to feel betrayed if the nuclear option is not exercised AND Terri is not saved.
We are not going to accept that Republicans have to expend massive political capital on Republicans two years away from an election in order to clear the way for the conservative Judiciary Republicans have been promising they would give us, if we gave them power, for 30 years.
If they don't do it, it is not because WE stood up for Terry Schiavo's life all the while demanding that the Republican Majority continue to fulfill its platform.
It will be because key Republicans simply DO NOT WANT TO DO IT.
It will be a choice.
WE are not "forcing" them to make that choice.
WE did not "blow" anything.
As it is for many.
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