Schiavo issue haunts Crist

St. Petersburg Times ^ | November 1, 2006 | ADAM C. SMITH

[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.\

[8mmMauser]

Then, at 7:06 a.m., January 24, 1989, he was strapped into the state of Florida electric chair and fried to a crisp with 2,000 volts. I wonder if Florida still has that electric chair. It certainly has some good candidates for crisping.

Now frying is free of transfat!

I think his last words were, owwwwww!

Returning from the vigil for Terri last year, I passed by Stark, the place where that chair sits, couldn't help having downright sinister thoughts! Don't know if it is still used because it so cruel and unusual. Maybe they could strap the Ted Bundy's of the world to that chair and just dehydrate them to death. That way nobody could complain because the critters would be in euphoria and have fun exercising their right to die.

Maybe some bioethicists would demonstrate how fun and painless it is. (Dang me, for those thoughts...)

[8mmMauser]

Louise is still in our prayers.

[8mmMauser]

Saddam gets the rope. Maybe they should have considered dehydrating him, too. Then the lefties would be less upset. (or not...)

[8mmMauser]

Two approaches in Florida...Mikey has chosen sides to help Clinton and the clintonists "stun" the nation.

Borrowing from a tag line of Sun, "If we lose the Senate, the Dems will have control of the judiciary committee. Vote on Nov. 7"

President Bush makes a campaign stop Monday in Pensacola. It doesn't appear, though, that Republican gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist will be with him.

In fact, the only statewide Republican candidate definitely planning to attend the event is the one the White House has treated almost as a political pariah - Senate candidate Katherine Harris.

Snip...

Former President Clinton keynoted a raucous get-out-the-vote rally here Saturday night, urging supporters to "stun the nation" Tuesday.

Snip...

The Democratic rally featured the party's entire slate for the election, including Davis' running mate Daryl Jones, attorney general candidate Walter "Skip" Campbell, chief financial officer candidate Alex Sink and agriculture commission candidate Eric Copeland.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, running for re-election, and former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham also offered pep talks. Joining the officials on stage at the Joseph Caleb Center were Michael Schiavo, who fought a lengthy legal and political battle to remove a feeding tube from his brain-damaged wife, and Freddie Pitts, a Miami man wrongly convicted of murder in the 1960s.

Candidates For Governor Use Distinct Tactics

8mm

[8mmMauser]

The Terri Factor plays out in Connecticut...

Seems the impending likely defeat of Lamont, despite campaign support from Mikey, precipitates pre-blame. In this instance, it is Terri amongst other causes. Notice that, even as we misspell Terri's name by accident on occasion, the left consistantly spells it wrong. Once or twice is a mistake, but the consistant use by the left of the masculine, Terry, raises suspicion of intent. I just don't know what that intent is.

According to the two big Times profiles, Ned, "a son of privilege," can't be a grounded civic-republican who taught awhile in an inner-city school; and Joe, an independent thinker toughened by the scourging of leftist bloggers and activists who've taken over the Democratic Party, can't have voted for the worst aspects of the Iraq War, the detainee bill, or the mauling of Terry Schiavo. At least the profiles don't break out of their own fixed ideas enough to report any of these facts.

How Journalists Lost the Connecticut Senate Race

8mm

[8mmMauser]

As the stem cell issue looms as another defining factor in the upcoming election, we see the far left consistantly melding the two diametric components into intended obfuscation. Adult Stem Cells which hold promise are lumped with Embryonic Stem Cells which offer tumors. Ping to wagglebee thread on a clarification of the issue.

For instance it has been clearly demonstrated that non-embryonic stem cells (non-ESCs)—which include umbilical-cord cells, placental derived cells, as well as adult stem cells found in places such as blood, bone marrow, skin and breast—do not cause cancer in humans. Also, if non-ESCs are obtained from the patient or from a family member donor with a matching tissue type, the risk of immune rejection of the non-ESCs can be virtually eliminated.

By contrast, research has shown that embryonic stem cells (ESCs), which are derived from embryos that are destroyed in the process, have great potential to produce cancer in humans...

Stem Cells: Embryonic vs. Non-Embryonic

8mm

[8mmMauser]

Mikey involved here, too.

It's part of a pattern that has shown itself in the last days of the campaign. Mr. Crist said he opposed state intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, but Michael Schiavo's attorney corrected the record last week by noting that Mr. Crist's office had argued in favor of intervention three years ago. Mr. Crist said he favored civil unions between gays and lesbians, but The St. Petersburg Times reported in 2005 that he had signed a petition for a constitutional ban on such unions.

When it comes to fights, Crist is state's lightweight

8mm

[8mmMauser]

"The NORTH it seem, shall rise again", a fantasy of a wishful lib posted in the Union Leader in New Hampshire and a fantasy application of a law of physics...

But what Tuesday's election seems likely to illustrate is that the laws of thermodynamics -- in particular, the one that states that for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction -- have not been repealed. Upstate New York, the Philadelphia suburbs, Connecticut's tweedy enclaves and the Microsoft precincts surrounding Seattle seem poised to show that they've had it with the party that restricts funding for stem cell research.

In Arizona and Colorado, secular libertarians have grown estranged from the party that invested the power of the federal government in the cause of keeping Terri Schiavo in a vegetative state.

Harold Meyerson: How the GOP lost the North

8mm

[8mmMauser]

Santorum is identified with the Terri Factor right to the last minute...

His leading role as a congressional opponent of abortion has won him strong supporters, including, in past elections, the vote of some socially conservative Democrats. But that high-profile stance has also generated opposition, including among some of the socially liberal Republicans in a state in which the last two Republicans elected to statewide positions, Sen. Arlen Specter, and former Gov. Tom Ridge supported abortion rights.

His identification with strong conservative positions on issues ranging from congressional intervention in the Terri Schiavo case to the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to theory of evolution added to his polarizing image with some voters.

Candidates make final push

8mm

[8mmMauser]

Fair and balanced? The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review weighs in...

Social and cultural issues: The Christian Right has hijacked the Republican agenda. From attempts at regulating America's behavior in the bedroom to the shameful interference in the pathetic story of Terry Schiavo and the attacks on Michael J. Fox over embryonic stem cell research, the GOP has become the handmaiden of the fundamentalists.

Many, and perhaps most, Americans don't think the government has any business in such matters.

The GOP precipice

8mm

[8mmMauser]

The Terri Factor and attacks on the President, from the rag that brings new meaning to the word, "treason"...

Later that year, the president and his younger brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, pushed their party into the arms of extreme-right religious groups by getting Congress to pass a measure requiring federal court review of a state order to remove a comatose woman’s feeding tube. Maximizing news media coverage of this startling intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, the president flew to the White House from his Texas ranch to sign the bill into law as quickly as possible.

The Schiavo incident, which became a national sensation for weeks, ended the hopes of Republican moderates to reach more independent-minded voters by shifting away from the party’s dependence on evangelical Christian groups. And yet, in the end, Bush did not fully leverage the upside of that dependence, depressing the religious right’s enthusiasm for the GOP by failing to deliver on much of its agenda, paying only lip service to issues such as banning gay marriage.

Craig Crawford: Bush Crashes the Party

8mm

[8mmMauser]

Pay no attention to the Legacy behind the curtain...

......................

It's been nearly two years since the Terri Schiavo case catapulted the right-to-life debate to the forefront. Now, it's even playing a role in Florida’s governor race.

In their final debate this week, Democratic congressman Jim Davis and Republican Attorney General Charlie Crist were asked if they spoke up against federal involvement in the Schiavo case.
    
They both said yes. But, Davis argued he voted against intervention while Crist refused to take a position. Crist says he told colleagues how he felt, and that his public silence communicated his feelings. 
   
Despite all this, political veterans don't think the issue will have an impact come Election Day. 

“It's an issue that was out there and was very hotly contested for a while, but now I think it's kind of downgraded to just another issue that people are trying to make some headway at and probably not very successfully,” political media consultant John Van Gieson said.

Crist also says his office was involved in the Schiavo controversy, when it defended Florida law in a court hearing on the matter, saying the federal government had no right to get involved.

Election 2006: Schiavo’s Impact

8mm

[8mmMauser]

The Puffington Host waxes shinola over the dream of the libs. Imagine no Republicans, no Heaven,

To paraphrase Mark Antony's eulogy of Julius Caesar, "I have come to bury the Republican Congress, not to praise it." While I may be premature, there is a good chance that on Tuesday, the nation will rescind the 1994 Contract with America and restore a Democratic Congress (at least partially).

Snip...

After all, it was the party of small and non-intrusive government that increased the size and powers of the government at the expense of civil liberties. It was the party of fiscal restraint and accountability that turned a record surplus into a record deficit and refused to hold the administration accountable for anything whatsoever. Even worse, with the Clinton impeachment and Terry Schiavo affair, the party gleefully pursed "extremism for the ake of extremism."

A Brief Eulogy for the Republican Congress

8mm

[8mmMauser]

Ping to a thread by Pokey78...

ONE of Britain’s royal medical colleges is calling on the health profession to consider permitting the euthanasia of seriously disabled newborn babies.

The proposal by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology is a reaction to the number of such children surviving because of medical advances. The college is arguing that “active euthanasia” should be considered for the overall good of families, to spare parents the emotional burden and financial hardship of bringing up the sickest babies.

Doctors: let us kill disabled babies

8mm

[pickyourpoison]

morning bump

[T'wit]

Morning? You can see at this hour? Grrmphmmf.

[T'wit]

>> Its almost sureal to consider that anyone would vote for a candidate on the basis of his or her support for Terri's tortureous death.

There is a valuable lesson in this for anyone. Namely, those bent on evil will stress some minor good (in this case, privacy). But they conspicuously do not mention the big picture and the massive evil they are doing (murder, corruption, police state, constitutional damage). They blind themselves. Even after decades of watching, I am amazed that the troops of the left will suck in the identical mindless argument, chant it in unison, and never give it a moment's thought.

[T'wit]

Poor Louise. Words fail.

[T'wit]

This is such painfully obvious propaganda, I hardly need mention that when the left breaks out the term "goon" for its enemy du jour, it is desperate.

[T'wit]

If Molly Ivins says it's the issue, it isn't.