If you thought the rhetoric and behavior of those attempting at every level to topple the judiciary was ugly now, you better strap on your seatbelts, because it is about to get ugly with a capital U:
RANDALL TERRY, OPERATION RESCUE: If she dies, there is going to be hell to pay with the pro-life, pro-family Republican people of various legislative levels, statewide and federal wide, who have used pro-life, pro-family conservative rhetoric to get into power, and then when they have that power, they refuse to use it.
Apparently, lawlessness in the name of God is what Randall Terry and his ilk thought he was getting, and that was what DeLay et. al were trying to deliver. The Instapundit notes:
I’m quite astonished to hear people who call themselves conservatives arguing, in effect, that Congress and the federal courts have a free-ranging charter to correct any injustice, anywhere, regardless of the Constitution. And yet my email runneth over with just those kinds of comments. And arguing that “it’s okay because liberals do it too” doesn’t undercut my point that conservatives are acting like liberals here. It makes it.
Every system generates unjust results. This may (or may not) be one of them, but there’s no reason to think that Congressional action on an individual legal case is likely to improve things. My lefty law professors used to think that more procedures were always better, and seemed willing to tie the Constitution and the rules of procedure into knots to get to the result they liked. Even they have learned, to a degree, that more procedure doesn’t necessarily lead to better outcomes overall. And conservatives, as opposed to bleeding-heart liberals, are supposed to understand that there’s more at stake than the outcome in individual cases, and that there are real costs to putting whatever thumb-pressure on the scales it takes to get to a desired outcome in each case. Or so I thought.
They aren’t conservatives, Glenn. It took me a while to realize it, to realize what I had helped to create, what I had enabled, but I have not been laboring for conservatism. It’s Big Government, Morality Edition, with a healthy dose of Corporate Cronyism, and they are just as troubling as the statists on the left. Speaking of the statists on the left, Ralph Nader has now inserted himself into the Schiavo household.
Talk about an eye opener. I agree with with Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, and Steve Gilliard. As it was noted in the comments below, “How weird is it that you now have to argue with Republicans that the law = justice?”
My world is upside down, and it is about to get zanier:
When party leaders have a view of reality that is at odds with that of their base, they’ve got a looming political problem. I suspect that Hill Republicans think that they have just gone the extra mile for pro-lifers with the Schiavo bill and therefore should be cut a little slack on stem cells. Most motivated pro-life voters, on the other hand, are going to be coming at this with a totally different mindset: By their lights, the Republicans waited until the last minute to act in the Schiavo case–and then failed. They are not going to be happy with Republicans who are deliberately and freely choosing to highlight an issue where the politics are difficult for pro-lifers right after they have had a bitter defeat.
I favor stem cell research, but I have been on record defending the compromise met by Bush several years ago, believing that compromise was possible. I was wrong. We were warned about the growing power of the theocrats, and we ignored those warning us. Hell- I derided them and chided them- at every opportunity. The day of reckoning is here, and it is going to be of Bibilical proportions. And I only hope that many of the Republicans in Congress, who like me were playing with fire and brimstone, begin to recognize it.
Urinated State of America
“I was wrong. We were warned about the growing power of the theocrats, and we ignored them. Hell- I derided them and chided them- at every opportunity.”
Darn. Here I had a whole comment composed comparing you to a co-dependent of an alcoholic, who’s horried to find, after buying a bottle of Jack Daniels for daddy, to find daddy drunk on the couch with vomit down his shirt. And then you go an pre-empy me with a mea culpa.
Good luck. I’d call you to go over to the Democrats, but my experience (having been part of the fight in the UK Labour Party to kick out Marxists from its ranks) is tha tif you really hate a particular ideology, you’re more effective fighting in within the party that ideology has infiltrated itself into.
Unfortunately for you, that means going to a lot of meetings whereyou have the unpleasant experience of hearing theocrats ranting just so you can vote the buggers down.
Mr. Ortiz
Wow, all these years* I thought I was a reluctant liberal, turns out I’m just a principled conservative. Thanks, John! But I still won’t vote Republican at the Federal level until DeLay and Co. are gone. I don’t want to be an enabler for them.
* I’m too young to remember Reagan or have an opinion on Daddy Bush. I started getting political during the Clinton years, but couldn’t vote. The contrived “scandals” of his tenure pushed me solidly into the Liberal camp for many years, even though many on the left creep me out.
Steven Taylor
There are a number of folks out there, some who know better, some who do not, who seem to think that power should trump all else, which is distrubing.
I went on at length about this yesterday evening:
http://www.poliblogger.com/index.php?p=6566
Joe
“I was wrong. We were warned about the growing power of the theocrats, and we ignored those warning us. Hell- I derided them and chided them- at every opportunity”
I had the same realization last year. Welcome to the club — it consists of a lot of bitter people who have lots of explaining to do to their liberal friends. There’s a lot of crow out there to eat. I’m no liberal, but last year had to admit to my many liberal friends that I was completely, utterly wrong about Bush and co. and that they were right. Wasn’t a lot of fun — makes arguing over economic policy and smaller government and federalism very hard.
JTH
Your realizations give me hope. Now if only they can spread on wings of reason.
I’ve got no problem with Republicans – all my family other than me are Republicans, and I share plenty of their values, even from my own leftward position.
But/so it’s been maddening to watch so many people unwilling to recognize…
That Bush and Co are not Republicans!
So very best wishes to you, and may your word be heard.
Indeed, you true Republicans are our only hope, at this point.
Michael
John, there are a great many things about which you and I (a leftist my entire adult life) will never come close to agreeing. But you are an honest man, and I respect you greatly for struggling to come to terms with the ruin your erstwhile allies seem determined to bring to the institutions of our republic. No schadenfreude from me: I know how painful such assessments are.
I wouldn’t think about calling you over to the Democratic party. I don’t want you anywhere near it. I want you in a sane, responsible Republican party, one of the thoughtful people whose deep philosophical errors I will enjoy debating, as equal members with me of a polity in which civil and intellectually free dispute is the norm. I hope to God we haven’t entirely and permanently lost our hold on that polity.
Jon H
And arguing that “it’s okay because liberals do it too” doesn’t undercut my point that conservatives are acting like liberals here.
Is this actually true, though?
Can anyone give me an equivalent action by a liberal congress and president?
For example, has a Democratic congress ever passed special-purpose legislation to, say, save the life of a specific prisoner on a state’s death row?