scary....crazy ....rednecks
Rift emerges in GOP after Schiavo case
By Nina J. Easton, Globe Staff | April 9, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Top conservative leaders gathered here a week after Terri Schiavo's death to plot a course of action against the nation's courts, but much of their anger was directed at leading Republicans, exposing an emerging crack between the party's leadership and core supporters on the right.
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Conservative leaders criticized President Bush for failing to speak out strongly against removing the feeding tube from Schiavo, the 41-year-old incapacitated woman who died March 31. They blamed the president's brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, for failing to employ State Police powers to take control of Schiavo. They condemned comments by Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Vice President Dick Cheney expressing support for the nation's judges.
And yesterday they issued an ''action plan" to take their crusade for control of the nation's courts well beyond Senate debates over judicial nominees, pressing Congress to impeach judges and defund courts they consider ''activist" and to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts over some sensitive social matters -- a strategy opposed by many leading Senate Republicans.
''This is not a Democrat- Republican issue; it is a liberal-conservative issue," Rick Scarborough, a Baptist minister and chair of the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration, sponsor of the gathering, said in an interview. ''It's about a temporal versus eternal value system. We are not going away."
The strategy session of more than 200 conservative activist leaders, in the works since February, was organized by a multifaith roster that included Protestant evangelicals such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell and home school activist Michael Farris, Catholics such as former Vatican ambassador Raymond L. Flynn, and Jews such as Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who runs the group Toward Tradition.
While conservatives have long accused liberal judges of making, rather than interpreting, laws, Massachusetts' adoption of gay marriage last year and Schiavo's death last week have magnified their fury. Whereas before they complained about ''judicial arrogance," speakers this week accused courts of ''gang violence" and waging ''unholy war" -- and drew applause when they called for the removal of judges who believe that interpretations of the US Constitution should change with the times. Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and a member of the House Judiciary Committee, called the situation ''a crisis."
Just five months ago, religious conservatives were a critical voting bloc for President Bush. Since then, they have become increasingly restless, first over the White House's reluctance to pursue a constitutional ban on gay marriage because of fears over a shortage of votes in Congress, and now over the failure of President Bush and Governor Bush to save Schiavo's life.
''Jeb Bush should have issued an executive order and brought her into state custody. He had the authority," said former chief justice Roy S. Moore of Alabama, who has become a celebrity of the right since being ousted for defying a court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Judicial Building.