Why, ask several bloggers and more than a couple of emails to this site, do Senate Democrats, and particularly Democratic Leader Harry Reid, seem to be cooperating with the Schiavo travesty? In particular, a lot of folks are very unhappy with a statement referring to the Senate’s version of the Schiavo bill as “bipartisan,” and suggesting House Republicans may not be willing to pass it.
There’s a lot of confusion over Reid’s statement and its timing (on Thursday, well before the latest round of shenanigans), but best I can tell, Senate Dems are going along with a “private bill” giving Schiavo’s parents a hearing before a federal judge as a way to head off what House Republicans really want to do, which is to establish a new federal law on life support withdrawal that will apply to all cases, not just to Schiavo’s.
Now that the effort to get the House to approve the “private bill” on a voice vote has failed, no telling what Republicans will try to do, but it’s a pretty good bet Reid and other Senate Dems will strongly resist any effort to pass a “no right to die” bill.
In other words, the fight is escalating, and it’s a fight that both Tom DeLay and Senate GOP leader Bill Frist seem to be entering into with considerable relish. DeLay, of course, would love nothing more than to identify himself with something, with anything, other than the pack of ethics problems surrounding him like a “treed” possum.
As for Frist, I think my colleague Marshall Wittman (a.k.a. The Bull Moose) probably hit it on the head in a quote that he served up to the London Times today: âI suspect that Senator Frist has his eye more on the Iowa caucus than the Hippocratic oath.”
