Republican Overreach

GOP May Be Out of Step With Public by Charles Babington and Michael A. Fletcher

Congressional Republicans and President Bush have seized upon the Terri Schiavo case with such fervor that they may find themselves out in front of an American public that is divided over right-to-die issues and deeply leery of government intrusion into family affairs, according to analysts and polls.

I'm skeptical that so many others are "deeply leery of government intrusion into family affairs", but that is true of me.

In another sign of the priority that the GOP has placed on the Schiavo matter, they have let it trump their traditional calls for a limited federal judiciary and respecting the "sanctity of marriage."

Yeah. Hypocrites. Of course any Democrat who suddenly stands up for a "a limited federal judiciary" is also a hypocrite, even if they're right.

An ABC News poll released yesterday concluded that "Americans broadly and strongly disapprove of federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, with sizable majorities saying Congress is overstepping its bounds for political gain."

But they seem wary of making political hay out of this, even as this article encourages them to:

"Our folks are nervous about this," said a high-ranking House Democratic aide, one of several who would speak only on background because of the topic's sensitivity. Democrats are aware of the polls, he said, but also wary of the intensity and determination of the conservative groups -- many of them steeped in the politics of abortion -- that are demanding that Schiavo be kept alive.

Democrats may be misreading the public's mood, however. "The intensity of public sentiment is . . . on the side of Schiavo's husband," the ABC poll concluded, with more Americans strongly supporting the feeding tube's removal than strongly opposing it.

And as Ryan Sager says in What Steroids and Schiavo Have in Common,

In coming years, political historians might look back and try to pinpoint the day or week or month that the Republican Party shed the last vestiges of its small-government philosophy. If and when they do, the week just past should make the short list. For it was in this last week that the Republican-controlled Congress made it clear that it sees no area of American life -- none too trivial and none too intimate -- that the federal government should not permeate with its power.