WASHINGTON, 24 March 2005 — Christian conservatives who helped elect President George W. Bush last November and increase Republican majorities in Congress have been driving the campaign to keep alive a brain-damaged woman who will likely die within two weeks if her feeding tube is not reconnected. With calculated public appeals, leaders of the conservative movement have managed not only to mobilize the US Congress and Bush to get on their side; they have also managed to silence opposition Democrats, who were burned in the last elections over their liberal stance on legalized abortion and are worried that they may again appear to come out on the wrong side of the moral values debate.
The case of Terri Schiavo, 41, has garnered national attention as her husband and her parents have waged a public battle over whether her feeding tube should be replaced after its removal on Friday. In the process, it also put Congress on a collision course with the US Constitution, and ignited a debate over end-of-life decisions as the powerful anti-abortion right-to-life movement flexed its muscle.
However, while most of the country is discussing the case, the silence from Democrats on Capitol Hill is deafening. One Democratic senator alone could have stopped the juggernaut that rolled through the nation’s capital over Palm Sunday weekend: In an extraordinary move, Congress reassembled from a recess and Bush jetted back from Texas to push through a law that took Schiavo’s case out of the hands of state courts and put it in the federal arena. Some Democrats even supported the law. But not one Democratic senator came forward to use a procedural tactic to prolong the process and force debate.
And few Democratic legislators have spoken out against the unprecedented decision by Congress to intervene in one woman’s life. The nearest any high-profile Democrat came to saying anything was when Howard Dean, a physician and the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, attacked Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, also a physician, for diagnosing Schiavo’s prospects for recovery via a videotape. In short, the minority Democrats sat on the sidelines as the legislation rushed through Congress.
Democrats were aware that coming down on the wrong side of the issue could mean losing more ground in the 2006 elections, a Senate Republican aide said, adding that Democrats right now “cannot afford hard-liners”. He said that when Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, “basically took a pass” on the issue, other Democrats would not have been able to oppose the legislation in the Senate without giving Reid and other Democrats who supported the bill a “black eye”. Critics have charged that the Republicans are trying to churn out political capital from the long-suffering Schiavo. An unsigned Republican memo called her case “a great political issue” that would excite “the pro-life base”.
That image was bolstered by a report that Tom DeLay, the Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives, told a conference organized by the conservative Family Research Council: “One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America.” The quote was taken from a tape recording of the private meeting obtained by The New York Times. Dan Allen, DeLay’s spokesman, disputed the interpretation of the tape, saying the congressional action was bipartisan in both houses of Congress and was not a political move. The case “brought us all together” to give Schiavo a chance to live, he said.
Schiavo’s fate “is putting into motion an unprecedented number of people” who believe in the “sanctity and culture of life,” Reverend Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, said in a phone interview. The coalition is a network of 43,000 churches. The support of these potential activists “could spill over” to the 2006 elections, he said.
Analysis of the 2004 election results showed that many voters supported Bush because he projected a stronger sense of moral values — often a euphemism for opposing legalized abortion — than Democratic candidate John Kerry. Sheldon said he hopes that the increasing clout of Christian conservatives will translate into action on other “moral” issues, such as banning gay marriage on the federal and state level, and allowing God to play a greater role in the lives of Americans. “The tide is changing in America,” Sheldon said.
Sheldon’s assessment was not backed by polling results over the past days, however. An ABC News poll showed that 67 percent of Americans believe Republicans intervened in the case for political reasons. Americans supported the removal of the feeding tube by a margin of 63 percent to 28 percent, and opposed federal intervention by 60 percent to 35 percent. The danger for Republican leaders is not only that the actions they have already taken could alienate moderates, but also that, in the end, they might very well fall short and Schiavo will die. Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan had a message for Republicans: “You have to win on this. If you don’t, you can’t imagine how much you’re going to lose. And from people who have faith in you.”
“Issue whatever subpoena, call whatever witnesses, pass whatever emergency bill, but don’t let this woman die,” Noonan wrote.
