Well well, some moderation from Senator Frist — He says judges acted fairly in the Schiavo case.

Why the moderation? Just a couple of weeks ago Frist propelled the Save Schiavo bill through the Senate. The Save Schiavo bill was anti-conservative in the worst way, treading upon the US Constitution and States’ Rights. The Save Schiavo bill was accompanied by the entire Republican universe, pretty much, claiming that “liberal activist judges” were forcing their culture of death on Schiavo.

For the past week, I have been seeing references in the media to how “polls” are showing that about 70% of the general public disapproved the Republican Save Schiavo bill. I don’t have links to the polls yet.

Then, as I blogged about a couple of days ago, a Republican Senator, Cornyn, said he “understood” why people are so very upset at judges that they might resort to violence (ang he didn’t mention that it was ignorant demonizing by the right wing that whipped people into a frenzy).

So, we can speculate about Frist’s motives in backtracking. Maybe he understands that the American People as a whole are not as extremist as his own party has become, and he wants to stop the bad press and the bleeding. That’s the most likely reason, pure politics.

The Republican leadership has not shown any signs that it intends to stop demonizing those with who it disagrees — because whipping the faithful into a feeding frenzy has been great electoral politics.

However, the Schiavo case has backfired on the Republicans (at least a lot of moderate Republicans are pissed at them), and so they have to cool it for awhile, hence the words of respect and peace from Frist. We’ll see how long Frist is willing to be “reasonable”. Not long I bet.

Yahoo! News - Frist Says Courts in Schiavo Case Acted Fairly: “Reuters
Frist Says Courts in Schiavo Case Acted Fairly

By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist said on Tuesday that courts had acted fairly in the Terri Schiavo ‘right-to-die’ case, differing sharply from a vow of retribution by his House of Representatives counterpart, Tom DeLay.

‘I believe we have a fair and independent judiciary today,’ said Frist, now trying to resolve a battle with Democrats over judicial nominations that threatens to tie his chamber into knots. ‘I respect that.’

Frist and DeLay, as the Senate and House majority leaders, had led a charge for emergency legislation calling on the federal courts to review the Schiavo case.

President Bush flew back from a Texas vacation to sign the bill into law.

But federal courts refused to intervene and let stand a Florida state court order to remove a feeding tube from the brain-damaged woman. Schiavo’s husband had said she would not have wanted to live in her condition, but her parents fought against the tube’s removal.

Schiavo died last week after spending 15 years in what courts had ruled was a persistent vegetative state.

DeLay, a Texas Republican, said afterward: ‘We will look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at the Congress and president when given jurisdiction to hear this case anew.’

In a written statement, DeLay said: ‘The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.’

‘FAIR AND INDEPENDENT’

Frist, asked about the furor over the case, told reporters, ‘I will let members (of Congress) … speak for themselves.’

But the Tennessee Republican said he believed the courts ‘acted in a fair and independent way.’”