Can I just ask a question here?

[maxudargo]

What the hell does the Terri Schiavo case have to do with the Democrats or liberals?

Listening to some of the stuff coming from the right, you would think liberals killed Terri Schiavo. You would think the Democrats signed her death warrant.

This was at first a long battle between Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers. Then the Republican party grabbed hold of it and made it a battle between the Republicans and ... the Republicans.

Judge Greer is a conservative Christian and a Republican. The US Supreme Court has a conservative, Republican-appointed majority. Congressional Republicans and our Republican president intervened and put themselves at odds with the Florida and federal judiciaries, and the courts simply ignored them and let the process play out the way it should.

I don't see that Democrats or liberals have participated in this drama at all. The position of the Democratic party has been that this is not a political issue and it is not appropriate to interfere in this legal matter as it comes to its final stages after seven years of due process. Democrats have done nothing that I am aware of to impede or facilitate this process.

So why are FOX and National Review Online screeching about how the Democrats and liberals are killing Terri Schiavo? What the hell does this have to do with us?

The answer, I suppose, is that you've got to frame every issue in this way, even if it makes no sense at all. All bad things come from liberal Democrats, even the sad death of a brain-dead woman whose feeding tube has been removed at the request of her husband supported by Republican judges. Even if no Democrat has ever had anything to do with anything that is happening.

The thing is, these people in Congress and at FOX News and NRO are smarter than this. They know they are full of shit. They know their arguments are nonsense, but they also know their audience will eat it up. Nobody has more contempt for the average Republican than the leadership of the Republican Party and the right-wing media. If only we could get the Republican voters to see that. It isn't elite liberals who disdain Joe Nascar, it's the people who cynically exploit his trust.

[Cocoa]

1. if this ploy had been successful

then the poll numbers would have been very different.

If Tom Delay had a better target than Ron Wyden (who?), then republicans out there would have perceived this case much different than they did. If Delay had someone like Hillary Clinton to rail against, we could very well be seeing polls showing a majority of people in favor of his position.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. Everything is reduced to a contest. Whether it is sports

politics, or baking cakes. They have successfully reduced Schiavo to a
contest between conservatives and liberals, even though I didn't see any meaningful representation on the part of any liberals.

[FSogol]

8. Exactly.

They define everything as right vs wrong, good vs evil, black vs. white. They are not smart enough to see gray in issues.

[Moondog]

3. And only Joe Nascar

can stop it. But he won't until he gets tired of being buggered, without benefit of Vaseline, while being told that it is for his own good.

[stevedeshazer]

4. The answer is

This entire sordid episode has been nothing but a political game for the Republicans.

That the Dems have been mostly silent is good news.

FOX, Nat'l Review and the like are using the death of someone and the resulting family grief to make political hay. This is the worst political theater I've seen in my fifty years.

[Old and In the Way]

13. This 50-something totally concurs with you.

The Republicans are hell bent on jumpstarting a social civil war. I think they are getting desperate to do it, too. They know that the game's up in 2006. If they can destroy the judiciary and get their political judge cronies into positions to protect them, they can rule us forever.

I think it's quite illuminating to see how 50-100 people could get the MSM to focus for weeks on Terri Schiavo, yet 100's of thousands protesting this government's policies don't warrent 5 minutes.

Maybe I'm an pathological optimist, but the national polling on the Schiavo issue might actually be the start of a popular groundswell of public opinion that has finally had enough of "compassionate conservatism"....maybe everyone is finally realizing that only the corporate criminals win when they pit liberals/progressives against the true conservatives.

[TexasSissy]

5. This is "GOP-speak." It doesn't have anything to do w/liberals...

but they're trying to make it so through their repeated GOP-speak messages. The army has been sent forth on TV trying to twist the message so that Americans misunderstand this aspect.

Scary thing is....GOP-speak has been very successful in the past. That's how * won election twice (well, got to be President, anyway, if he didn't actually win).

If the Dems were a more cohesive group, they'd be doing Dem-speak on TV and getting the real message out. But, alas, the Dems are not a cohesive group, esp. considering that it's the Dems who allowed the Congress to intervene in the states' rights issue of the Sciavo case.

[brainshrub]

6. They feel persecuted by the Left.

The RW rank-and-file identify strongly with the Schiavo case because the mythology built by Schindlers fit the paradigm that conservatives are victims of a culture that wants to see them destroyed. It doesn't matter how many elections Republicans win, how many levels of government they control or how many media outlets drill the party line: Social Conservatives feel they are powerless to stop the intellectual latte-drinking Liberals from destroying their way of life.

When Teri Schiavo's body dies, this will be a validation of the victim-based belief system that much of conservative ideology is based on. You can be sure that the corporate elite knows this, and Republicans are hoping to tap into this feeling of victimhood to energize a new generation of conservatives. This is why Bush was willing to cut his vacation short for Schiavo, where the deaths of hundreds of thousands of tsunami victims did not.

I suggest you read "What's the Matter With Kansas."

[maxudargo]

10. I have read What's the Matter with Kansas, and I agree with your assessmen

It's in some ways similar to the way racists view the world. They choose an arbitrary division between two groups of people that they define as having no common interests and they try to promote conflict between the two groups - insisting that conflict is inevitable in the first place.

The proper response is for decent people on both sides of this arbitrary divide to refuse this world-view and work together against the racists.

[heidler1]

7. We have sit back and let the GOP self destruct, ain't it great.

[bearfan454]

Here is your answer:

The repukes were trying to be able to override Court decisions that they didn't like. They wanted to set a precedent.

This was a backdoor to Roe VS Wade. Sanctity of life in Terry Schiavo's case could have been applied to abortion cases.

Fuck them. They lost.

[ginnyinWI]

20. good answer

And when things don't go well, it is never their fault. So by default it's the Democrats' fault. Because they....um....because they...um...well it must be Bill Clinton's fault, one way or t'other!!

[maxudargo]

9. Is Joe Nascar so used to viewing politics as a sport

where he cheers for his team and hisses at the opposing team, where "who's right and who's wrong" is a meaningless concept, that he will buy this idea that this is all a battle between conservatives and liberals?

I know the earlier polls give us reason to be optimistic, but I wonder what the polls say now after a week of right-wing spin?

The whole affair, in every aspect, is so completely anti-rational.

[brainshrub]

11. By the way: I love your work!

FOXxy Lady was great! Are you working on anything new?

[maxudargo]

12. Thanks

Yes, I'm finally finishing up the fourth Burton episode. Hopefully I'll have it up in a few days.

[brainshrub]

15. Wonderful!

I'm a big fan of your site.

[penpal7]

14. You do see a lot of republicans walking around with the thousand yard

stare as if they can't figure out what the hell happened their party is self destructing.

[mmonk]

16. judges, prevailing law, etc.

[Califooyah Operative]

17. Republicans politicized an issue, and then put blame on us, .nt.

[salin]

18. B/c those folks are programmed to blame everything

on democrats. It is they, according to Guckert's words, who are divorced from reality.

[Javaman]

19. The answer is:

Who is Tom Delay?

I'll take Hypocritical republicans for $1000, Alex.