Changing From Republican To Radical

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Changing From Republican To Radical
Michael Harris - Ottawa Sun
April 01, 2005

Even the most fact-averse, red-white-and-blue groupie of George Bush has to be wondering; what the heck’s going on here?

A few weeks back, I had Pat Buchanan on my radio show. Pat, who has some strange toys of his own in the political attic, declared that the president was a radical. Not a conservative, not a Republican, a radical.

Canuckistan Pat must have choked on his Cheerios when the president summoned Congress back from holidays to pass a new law expressly to help "save" poor Terri Schiavo, a rescue 20 courts had already ruled the brain-dead woman did not even want. The party of Abe Lincoln was looking like a theological junta encroaching on the constitutional authority of the judiciary with a Cromwellian light in their eyes.

In one mighty legislative belly-flop, Bush wiped out two and a half centuries of conservative tradition by dismissing the ruling of the Florida supreme court as if it had never existed. States’ rights, the foundation and philosophical heart of the Republican Party, was trumped by George’s personal beliefs in tandem with Karl Rove’s hitherto unerring sense of political opportunism.

But the difference between this exercise and the fabricated casus belli that took America to a dirty war in Iraq, is that for the first time, Bush’s abuse of power has been decried by the American people. Eighty-five percent of them disapprove of this exercise in Congressional meddling and the president’s Napoleonic style. Bush’s approval rating has dropped 7 points in a week to its lowest point since he took office.

Why? This time there was no hiding the hypocrisy or the iron fist in the velvet glove. Again, it was his language that gave him away. Americans learned that George did not always "err on the side of life" as he claimed when demanding Terri’s Law. As governor of Texas in 1999, he signed a bill into law that cut off funds for the life support of children whose parents wanted them to live but who couldn’t afford the medical bills.

They also learned that the Republican majority leader in the U.S. House, Tom DeLay, had more experience in such matters than he let on. DeLay, who said that God had brought him a brain-dead patient (Terri Schiavo) to help him in his mission to bring a "biblical worldview" to American public life, pulled the plug on his own father 17 years ago.

Charles DeLay, then 65, was reduced to a vegetative state after a tragic accident. Like Terri Schiavo, he had no living will. DeLay, then a third-term congressman, did not propose a "Charles’ Law." Instead, he joined with his family in ending life support for his dad for the same reasons as Michael Schiavo.

How far were these peanut and tiny marshmallow encrusted nutbars prepared to go in the Schiavo affair? There were reports that Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida and the president’s brother, was ready to send state law enforcement agents to kidnap Terri from her hospice, until he learned that local police said that they would enforce the court order refusing to re-insert the woman’s feeding tube.

It wouldn’t have looked very good on the old home movies to see Jeb dragged off to the slammer as an anarchist defying the judicial branch of his own government and country.

The truth is America is bouncing off the walls at home in the name of a religious extremism that makes a mockery of true American and Christian values.

This week the Washington Post reported that a growing number of pharmacists are refusing to fill legal prescriptions for birth control or morning after pills in the United States. Several states have already passed so-called "conscience" legislation that permits doctors and health care workers to refuse various procedures to patients that conflict with their personal beliefs. And in a survey by the National Teachers Association, 31% of respondents felt obligated to present creationism as an equal "theory" to evolution in U.S. schools. Is it any wonder that Judge George Greer, the principal judge in the Schiavo case, now needs armed guards?

With the president chastened by a humiliating rejection of his Schiavo gambit, Americans may make a greater effort to inform themselves on other policies of this Administration abroad which are every bit as hypocritical as Terri’s Law. Who in their right mind would sell 24 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, a country that self-admittedly sold nuclear technology to rogue states, is run by a tyrant, remains a hotbed of terrorism and regularly threatens its nuclear neighbor, India?

President Bush’s answer at India’s justifiable outrage? Sell even deadlier F-16 fighters to New Delhi "much superior to any existing fighters in service the world over." This from the same president who demands that Iran stop its nuclear program, the European Union not sell arms to China, and even registers its objections when the government of Venezuela buys 100,000 assault rifles from Russia. "I just don’t know what they need them for," a puzzled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mused.

Think about it Rummy. It will come to you.