In case you missed it, you need to read House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s highly unusual statement upon the death of Terri Schiavo yesterday — unusual because it doesn’t miss a beat in using the occasion for more demonization and attempts at political intimidation:
“Mrs. Schiavo’s death is a moral poverty and a legal tragedy. This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today. Today we grieve, we pray, and we hope to God this fate never befalls another. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Schindlers and with Terri Schiavo’s friends in this time of deep sorrow.”
Well, it’s nice to know that this was the day just to grieve and not for bitternesss or political threats, Tom….
This is more of the same attempt to define those with whom DeLay disagrees in the worst emotional light, more of the politics of division and more of an attempt by DeLay to push the policical p.r./defense line of “Hey’, I’m a good guy ideologically and anyone who opposes me is doing it for my positions — not questions raised about my ethics.”
Indeed, DeLay is now so confident the he has organized conservatives to defend him no matter what — because he went for bat with them on this one he now feels assured that they will move heaven (which he clearly think he has locked up) and earth (that one needs some more work) to keep him in power no matter what allegations are made or proved about his ethics — that he even issued a taunting “bring it on” to critics:
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) challenged his liberal critics yesterday to “bring it on,” as major conservative groups organized a formal defense against questions about DeLay’s ethical conduct….
The groups — led by David A. Keene of the American Conservative Union and including the Heritage Foundation, Leadership Institute and Family Research Council — met privately with DeLay last week and pledged to use their grass-roots databases and networks to try to mitigate the damage from news accounts of DeLay’s travel and relationships with lobbyists….
Two liberal interest groups announced plans yesterday to spend $100,000 on television advertising designed to inhibit DeLay’s effectiveness as the House’s second-ranking leader, but DeLay reacted defiantly as he made stops in his suburban Houston congressional district.
Asked his reaction to the ad campaign, DeLay said, “Bring it on.”
“It’s nothing but a bunch of leftist organizations that have a public strategy to demonize me, and usually they overreach,” DeLay told Fox News and other news outlets. “My constituents know what’s going on, and if they’re going to do this, I think it shows who they are and what they are.”
DeLay said the planned attack “says more about the critics than it does about me.”
It’s truly sad when you see people of EITHER PARTY (as we have seen in recent years) toss aside standards that that they would insist be applied to the opposition because someone on their side is the one under fire. It feeds cynacism about 21st Century politics — that all the blather about values is just that…words used to hurl at others but not applicable to your own. We’ve seen this with both parties and it’s never pretty — and we’re seeing it again now with DeLay, who knows how to use the system and partisans to perpetuate himself in power. Will he be indicted? If that happens it’d be indictment inschmitment..
Meanwhile, those who opposed him on the Schiavo affair — that means Terri Shiavo’s husband Michael Schiavo, those “activist” judges (from both parties) who didn’t agreee with him and rubber stamp Congress’ action, plus the 80 percent of Ameicans that polls showed felt Congress and the President should have stayed out of this affair — should know from his statement above that he hasn’t forgotten THEM but yesterday was not a day to use for politics, retribution or threats….just a day to remind people that he and his supporters will attend to them later…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.