Another R-Winger Wants Delay Thrown Off The Bus.

Opinion by Bill Press

The lesson is clear: What was gleefully undertaken as a big political plus for the Republican Party has already turned into a net political loss. Republicans should have known better. They should have realized that the vast majority of Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, did not identify with the extreme religious wackos camped out in front of Terri Schiavo's hospice.


DeLay's got it backward. It's not the judges who are out of control. It's the House majority leader. First, DeLay forced federal judges to take up the Terri Schiavo case. Now he's waging war on them because, after they considered all the evidence, they didn't make the decision he demanded.

It's not judges who thumbed their noses at Congress. It's Congress who thumbed their noses at the Constitution. Did anybody tell DeLay and company that judges don't have to do what Congress tells them? Did they ever hear of the separation of powers? We haven't seen such arrogance since the days of Newt Gingrich.

Both Vice President Dick Cheney and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist have publicly rejected DeLay's war on judges. But House Republicans seem determined to follow their leader off a cliff. They're making a huge mistake. They should simply admit that the Terri Schiavo intervention was a well-meaning, perhaps, but nevertheless unwise and unconstitutional abuse of power.

The more Republicans beat the Terri Schiavo drum, the greater their attacks on judges, the longer they follow Tom DeLay, the more they pander to the religious right – the more the Republican Party will be seen as nothing but a subsidiary of the Christian Coalition. God save America.
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