posted on March 23, 2005 08:28:13 PM new
Ladies and Gentleman meet the HONORABLE TOM DELAY:
"It Is More Than Just Terry Schiavo"
Transcript: The embattled House Majority Leader finds parallels between Terri Schiavo's case and his own
By KAREN TUMULTY
Wednesday, Mar. 23, 2005
Last Friday, as the House and Senate were working out their differences over legislation to stop the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay discussed the issue at a gathering of the Family Research Council at the Willard Hotel in Washington. In the speech, he drew parallels between Schiavo's situation and his own as he faces a barrage of ethics allegations, and he implicitly asked the conservatives to come to his defense as they have Schiavo's. A recording of the speech was supplied to TIME by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy group:
"It is more than just Terri Schiavo. This is a critical issue for people in this position, and it is also a critical issue to fight that fight for life, whether it be euthanasia or abortion. I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, one thing God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo to elevate the visibility of what's going on in America. That Americans would be so barbaric as to pull a feeding tube out of a person that is lucid and starve them to death for two weeks. I mean, in America that's going to happen if we don't win this fight.
"And so it's bigger than any one of us, and we have to do everything that is in our power to save Terri Schiavo and anybody else that may be in this kind of position, and let me just finish with this:
"This is exactly the kind of issue that's going on in America, that attacks against the conservative moment, against me and against many others. The point is, the other side has figured out how to win and to defeat the conservative movement, and that is to go after people personally, charge them with frivolous charges, link up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros, and then get the national media on their side. That whole syndicate that they have going on right now is for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to destroy the conservative movement. It is to destroy conservative leaders, and not just in elected office, but leading. I mean, Ed Feulner, of the Heritage Foundation today was under attack in the National Journal. This is a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in. And you need to look at this, and what's going on and participate in fighting back.
"You know, one way they stopped churches from getting into politics was Lyndon Johnson, who passed a law that said you couldn't get in politics or you're going to lose your tax-exempt status, because they were all opposed to him when he was running for President. That law we're trying to repeal. It's very difficult to do that, but the point is, when they can knock out a leader, then no other leader will step forward for a while, because they don't want to go through the same thing. If they go after and get a pastor, then other pastors shrink from what they should be doing. It forces Christians back into the church. That's what's going on in America. The world is too bad and I'm going to get inside this building and I'm not going to play in the world. That's not what Christ asked us to do.
"And so they understand that. It is a political maneuver, and they are going to try to destroy the conservative movement, and we have to fight back, so please, this afternoon, each and every one of you, if you know a senator, give them a call. They'll say our bill can pass in the House. Tell them, okay, your bill is fine, but the House bill is better, and I want the House bill. Particularly if you know Democrats. Don't let them get off the hook by hiding behind one House and the other is adjourned. We can do anything we need to do to pass any bill that we need to pass."
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Joseph Dolman
Frist and DeLay's trap has another catch
Mar 23, 2005
March 23, 2005
At the moment, Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas and Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee must feel like geniuses. The Republican brain-trust has managed to trot out a weapon in the culture wars that leaves the sad-sack Democrats thoroughly baffled.
While half of me admires the creative deviousness of the trick, the other half is repulsed.
By daring to play tug-of-war with Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, the GOP has promised to turn life into a living hell for some of the more thoughtful Democrats on the planet.
The Democrats' mission now is to find an effective way to fight back - before they get caught in new and still more outrageous traps. For all the evil genius of Frist and DeLay, I think there might be a way ultimately to beat their cynical tactics.
That's because Congress' escapade last weekend will prove disastrous.
Never mind that the GOP now appears to endorse as a matter of policy government meddling in a family's private matters. And never mind the wacky spectacle of our whole elected government hurrying back to Washington to vote on a much-litigated medical issue that affects one - and only one - unfortunate Florida woman.
At bottom this episode was about something else. It was a sop to the religious right. It was meant to showcase the awe that Republicans supposedly harbor deep within their hearts for a "culture of life."
The congressional maneuver left Democrats with one of two choices. They could go along with the show like a roomful of sullen hostages. (Almost half of them did just that when the House voted early Monday morning.) Or they could take the route of Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and inveigh with eloquence (and futility) against Congress' intrusion into Schiavo's case.
There's just one catch here. It just so happens that Nadler represents Manhattan's Upper West Side - a swath of ancient liberalism that has somehow survived the ruins of time like the contents of Tutankhamen's tomb. No 2006 challenger is likely to make Nadler explain why he voted for a "culture of death" over a "culture of life."
But other Democrats who voted against DeLay and Frist won't be so lucky. As Frist and DeLay well know, the complex answers to questions like this are impossible to address in a sound bite. All their guy has to do is say that he's for life while the other guy must fight his way out of a swamp: What is life? What is death? When is it right to pull out feeding tubes? Long story short: Gotcha!
At least that's one story.
I think it's also possible that Frist and DeLay have seriously misread their Red State base. For one thing, the pollsters and political scientists I know say the Schiavo case is unusual. Even in the South, voters could ultimately resent the intrusion of zealots into family affairs.
"The issue is a risky one," says Utica-based pollster John Zogby. "Who emerges the winner?" Just seeing the matter debated makes most people cringe.
And though the Schiavo case might rev the religious right into spasms of political fervor, I can't imagine it creating waves of excitement beyond that.
I base this notion in part on personal experience. I grew up in the piney woods of East Texas - where the political conservatism runs about as deep as the red-clay soil.
Yet in the Jacksonville Daily Progress of Cherokee County, my former home, last Sunday is an editorial that lambastes the Congress for the Schiavo mess. "Government has no business legislating the relationship between a husband and wife," wrote managing editor Larry Krantz in an unsigned piece. He went on to say that the "right to death with dignity is something everyone should be afforded when that time comes. If anything, the state should protect that right, rather than forcing a family to stay in the present when it's clearly time for her husband and the families involved to move on."
Oh, yeah. There's also an ABC poll, out Monday, that shows Americans support the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube by a margin of 63 percent to 28 percent. Bottom line: I know it's tough, Democrats. But come out of your bunkers. You haven't lost this one yet.
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Posted on Tue, Mar. 22, 2005
Analysis: DeLay under fire over ethics
LAURA MECKLER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Tom DeLay, who has wielded political power with uncommon efficiency, looks into the mirror and sees a victim of politics. Others are less charitable.
With allegations of questionable ethics swirling around him, the House majority leader finds himself a target of a great Washington sport: tearing down the titans.
In Washington, though, there's always an alternative spin. DeLay is no victim, his detractors say, but the latest in string of leaders who climbed to the top and arrogantly abused the power that awaited them.
Either way, the man known as the Hammer is taking a pounding.
His troubles began last fall, when three political fund-raisers with ties to him were indicted in his home state of Texas. Then the House ethics committee admonished him, not once but three times. Since then, questions have been raised about whether he knew about the dubious sources of money behind trips he took to Britain and South Korea.
He blames politics.
"It is very unfortunate that the Democrats have no agenda. All they can do is try to tear down the House and burn it down in order to gain power," he said in defending himself.
Not quite, replied the House's top Democrat, Rep. Nancy Pelosi: "Tom DeLay's embarrassment springs from his own behavior and has nothing to do with the Democrats."
Either way, there's no doubt DeLay has been drawn into a Washington blood sport that gets going when the scent of scandal touches someone mighty and divisive.
"Tom is the kind of guy that people want to go after because he plays politics to the hilt, and politics is a game in which every dog has his day," said former GOP Rep. Bill Frenzel, now with the Brookings Institution.
"Clearly, Tom is in the eye of the hurricane, and a lot of people would love to see him out of Washington," said Frenzel, the former congressman. "But they can't run him out just because they don't like him. They're going to have to find a good reason."
DeLay, 57, was first elected to Congress in 1984, representing Houston suburbs, and has risen to become one of the most influential conservatives on Capitol Hill.
He fights government regulation at every turn, a position hardened during the years before he came to Washington when he ran a pest control business and railed at "Gestapo" environmental regulators. He's also a leader among religious conservatives, pushing for a more God-centered nation.
Ahead of the 2000 presidential race, he outlined a vision where "we march forward with a biblical worldview, a worldview that says God is our Creator, that man is a sinner, and that we will save this country by changing the hearts and minds of Americans."
"We have the House and the Senate. All we need is the presidency!"
Despite a growing ethics cloud over the past six months, he remains enormously influential.
He jumped into an issue with religious overtones last week, taking up the cause of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman in Florida whose feeding tube was removed after a long court battle between her parents and her husband.
DeLay attacked Democrats for resisting a bill in the House aimed at giving Schiavo's parents the right ask a federal court to intervene, but he reached out to Democrats for help when it became clear that was the only way to prolong Schiavo's life.
He came to prominence after Republicans captured control of the House in 1994. Elected whip, the No. 3 spot in the leadership, he was responsible for lining up votes for the GOP agenda. By all accounts, he did it remarkably well, winning close votes and knowing when to pull a bill from consideration when it might lose.
Lawmakers say he corralled votes by building loyalty, offering personal and professional help to members and assisting with projects important to their districts. He also took a hard line with lobbyists, openly pushing trade associations to hire Republicans and donate to the GOP.
He might have become House speaker in 1998 after Newt Gingrich stepped down, and his would-be successor, Louisiana Rep. Bob Livingston, abruptly bowed out. But he said his leading role in impeaching President Clinton made him "too nuclear." Instead, he backed his deputy, little-known but better-liked Rep. Dennis Hastert, for the job.
Now he finds himself in a situation similar to what Gingrich faced.
In September, three political fund-raisers tied to DeLay were indicted by a Texas grand jury in a case involving a political committee that DeLay helped create. The committee is accused of illegally using corporate donations for political purposes. Documents in a related civil trial suggest DeLay played a substantial role in the group's corporate fund raising.
DeLay has denied wrongdoing, accusing the chief prosecutor of "trying to criminalize politics."
Then the House ethics committee admonished DeLay for pressuring a congressman to vote for a Medicare bill by promising to support his son's run for Congress.
A week later, the panel again rebuked him for enlisting the Federal Aviation Administration in a search for Texas Democratic lawmakers during a battle over a redistricting plan he engineered. He was also admonished for creating the appearance of favoritism when he discussed pending energy legislation with lobbyists at his fund-raising golf outing.
DeLay again dismissed the panel's findings as politics. Even so, both parties are preparing for what could be future charges.
Republicans tried and failed to change House rules so DeLay could remain majority leader in case he is indicted. They then replaced the panel's GOP chairman, who presided over the rebukes, along with two GOP members who supported them.
"I don't see this as a witch hunt," said Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at Washington University in St. Louis. "I see it as a question of whether anyone can do anything to hold someone that powerful accountable."
posted on March 23, 2005 08:55:09 PM new
CROW,
And now all of America is finding out it wasn't "compassionate conservatism" that was pushing their agenda!
posted on March 24, 2005 02:27:43 PM new
Sleeze ball. It's all about politics. Poor, poor Tom DeLay. It just keeps getting worse. Well, folks, the majority of Americans (whose votes actually counted) voted to live this way. All I can say is that they're getting what they voted for.
