Will Jeb Bush Pull an Orval Faubus?

By DHinMI

I hadn't really put much thought into what would happen after Terri Schiavo's parents run out of legal manuvers, but Steve Gilliard raises the intersting possibility that this might force Jeb Bush to either defy the courts or risk a huge backlash for failing to deliver for the fundies:

The backlash could hit Jeb square in the face. The further he goes with this, the more he and DeLay invest in this circus, the more they have to lose. If Jeb intervenes illegally, he'll be hammered by the courts. If he doesn't, the Ultras may get even crazier. The more emotional this gets, the more liklihood there is of violence. What's to stop someone from shooting their way into the hospice in a misguided attempt to rescue Terri Schiavo? The radical right has created an evirnoment where violence could explode at any moment. People so reckless that they will let their kids get arrested.

Even the GOP is mervous about how this plays out and they should be. The rage of the ultras may be turned against the GOP pols in a violent way.

I'm not sure about an armed incursion into the hospital, but who knows?  Steve is correct that this has created a hysteria and set of expectations that could turn out bad for the wingers.  I've commented before about the Religious right's failure to achieve any significant victory in the culture wars for over thirty years.  Now, despite a Republican state legislature, a Republican Congress, a majority of judges throughout the entire federal judiciary having been appointed by Republicans, and a Republican governor who's brother is the second-term Republican President of the United States, the circus in Florida seems set to now go into death-watch mode, with the media stories shifting from the effort to "save" her life to waiting for it to end.

How will that sit with the religious right (who Gilliard called "ultras")?  Sure, the leadership of most of those groups will muddle along, becuase to separate from the Republicans would cost them too much prestige and way too damn much cash.  But what about the real rank-and-file true believers, who significantly overlap with the rank-and-file Republican activists?  Will their zeal for the Republican party fade?  In most cases cognitive dissonance will prevail, and they'll continue soldiering on for the Republican party.  But can the GOP really afford to lose even a sliver of their activist base?  And will Jeb Bush, who's not a political moron, realize that he's inflated expectations so high that he may have to defy the courts or lose credibility with his activist base?

This may be one of the most stark examples of the differences between Republican promises to the far right and their unwillingness and/or inability to actually deliver on those promises to reverse social change and return us to a nation and a society that never really existed.

[UPDATE]

Something just occurred to me: I don't know if this analogy has been made already, but the Schaivo case is reminding me of the Elian Gonzales case.  You have a family split on what should happen to someone not capable of making their own decisions.  You have the right wing proping up the side with less legitimacy and trying to use a family dispute to make national political gains by using a specific case as a wedge issue.  You have appaling media coverage.  And you have the state authorities trying to flout the decisions of the federal courts.  The big difference, however, is that unlike the abrupt end to the Gonzales case, this sad case will likely linger on for a while after the final decision is made.

Comments

[DemFromCT]

CNN is playing this as you suggest right now. Jeb Bush is getting pressure to ACT whatever than means. He's, according to CNN, getting word he needs to kidnap this woman and forcibly place the feeding tube, as well as compared it to Elian.

[Meteor Blades]

Much as I want Terri to find her peace, I must admit that a hardcore, Machiavellian bit of me wants Jeb to do exactly what these crazies are suggesting.

[DemFromCT]

ABC had Randall Terry threatening Bush and all the repubs who got elected yet refuse to use their power to 'save' Terri.

What you predicted is coming true.

[Meteor Blades]

With his usual courtesy, Rude Pundit deconstructs Ann Coulter's call for military action by Jeb Bush with this blast.

[Incertus]

My guess is that Jeb will find some way to split the difference--make some putridly empty yet symbolic gesture to "save Terri," probably on Easter Sunday for maximum effect, perhaps even getting "arrested in an act of civil disobedience" like those numbnuts who tried to bring her a glass of water earlier this week. It'll give him political cover while not actually doing anything.

[emptypockets]

What if she were arrested? The prison could keep her alive then, as a ward of the state, right?

What if she were considered a threat to domestic security - they could send her to Guantanamo and keep her alive indefinitely, with no recourse to the courts, right?

What if the Director of Homeland Security decreed that the safe maintenance of our borders requires she be kept alive - that supercedes all laws and judges now, right? (or is that only for the Mexican border?)

Jeb's options boggle the mind.

[theorajones]

Only it's not like Elian. At all.

Before she had a heart attack, Terry Schaivo was an adult who was fully capable of making her own decisions. Her parents are making two arguments: first, that she'd want to be kept alive in a permanent vegetative state (or that we don't know what she would have wanted), and second, that even if she wouldn't want to be kept alive in a permanent vegetative state, she's not actually in a permanent vegetative state. Her husband is saying the opposite--that Terry wouldn't want to live like this, and that she said so before she ever got sick.

The court has found that the husband is correct. Terry HERSELF a) didn't want to be kept alive in her current condition and b) really is in her current condition.

So, the issue we've lost sight of is that while Terry can't make her wishes clear now, she DID make them clear before. If the court didn't find evidence of that, they wouldn't have ruled! The fact that her parents can't accept what Terry wants is sad, and the fact that right wingers are taking advantage of the parents' denial for political purposes is appalling. But at the heart of it, the question in the Schaivo case is "What did Terry want," as opposed to the Elian Gonzales case, where the child Elian was incapable of making the decision for himself. So it's not what the parents want vs. what the husband wants--it's what the parents want vs. what TERRY wanted.

[tulip]

I posted this Great Big Intuitive Flash on dK, on one Schiavo thread or another, and nobody picked up on it. Maybe I'm off (wouldn't be the first time) But I found myself thinking this morning that there is potentially some specific benefit accruing to the D's on one important issue-- Judicial nominations. Listen: a lot of reasonable people have watched this with (varying degrees of) horror. The circus in Congress & the cultish circus of Randall whosis. I wager a lot of them heaved a sigh of relief that the courts stood firm, were not bullied into wild-eyed hysterical action. Now here comes Bushie, proposing to seat on the bench of upper courts the very sort of people who would have behaved in a flipped-out save-Terry screw-the-constitution way.

Properly managed now, that reasonable majority (D's & non-wingnut R's) will not be rooting for Bugman and the Cat Murderer,when the time for those nominations rolls around.

anyone out there think I have a point? Any ideas of how, when to take advantage of this?