Jay Bookman Rick Santorum and the Terri Schiavo disaster (thank you FSogol for jogging my memory!)

http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2012/02/14/rick-santorum-and-the-terri-schiavo-disaster/


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The second, and far more egregious, was the Terri Schiavo affair, in which Congress attempted to directly intervene in a family dispute in Florida involving a clearly brain-dead woman. Republicans in Washington DC became so overwrought in that case, so certain of their laymen’s ability to diagnose Schiavo’s medical condition from afar, so wrapped up in their own sanctimony, that they tried to subpoena the Florida judge handling the case to testify in Congress and even passed “emergency legislation” ordering the federal judiciary to intervene to “save” Schiavo.

The crowning moment came, you may recall, when President Bush broke off his vacation in Texas to fly back to Washington to sign the “Save Terri” bill into law.

I bring all this up because the person perhaps most responsible for that shameless act of political narcissism is now a leading candidate for the GOP president nomination. Back in 2005, then-Sen. Rick Santorum helped turn the Schiavo tragedy into a national morality play, with himself and a few others self-cast as its heroes. He even went so far as to visit Schiavo’s bedside in Florida, proclaiming that her mental state was “close to equivalent of someone with the disease cerebral palsy.”

“”We need to do something to stop this unconscionable act on the part of the Florida Court,” Santorum preached at the time. “Terri Schiavo is a daughter, a sister, and most importantly, a person. We cannot allow an innocent person to be put to death.”

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