Did the Terri Schiavo hoopla bring "blowback" against the Christian Right?

Wes Allison and Anita Kumar report that it did: Faith and consequences - What Terri's Law cost the Republicans in Congress St. Petersburg Times 12/18/05.

After four years of galloping triumph for the conservative Republican agenda, the rush to pass Schiavo legislation marked a critical turning point in Washington, helping expand fissures in a Republican Party known for discipline, emboldening Democrats and derailing conservative social initiatives that had been expected to win easy approval in Congress this year.

Republicans in Congress and the White House have been forced to scale back spending cuts for education and social programs, new tax cuts for the wealthy and the easing of environmental restrictions.


Republicans hold comfortable majorities in both chambers, and the number of conservative members has climbed in recent elections. But wary of overreaching again, Congress has done little since Schiavo to appease the GOP's evangelical base, delaying constitutional amendments banning gay marriage and allowing prayer in school, as well as new restrictions on abortion.

"The landscape changed," lamented Bruce Fein, a conservative columnist and former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. "The wish list for the Christian right has been swept away."

This may be a partial explanation of the question raised by "pessimist" at The Left Coaster about why the Christian Right pretty much ignored the recent case of an adult woman in Texas disconnected from life support by her doctors against the wishes of her family ("It didn't take long - 15 to 16 minutes" 12/16/05). Their power has been attenuated by public alarm over their extremism. Also, as pessimist notes, the woman in the more recent case was different from Schiavo because she was black. For the Christian Right, some kinds of human life are more precious than others.

There have been other things, as well, that have reduced the Christian Right's influence in Congress in 2005, not least of them the Iraq War. And without those other factors, the Shiavo case might be remembered as one more instance in which a cowed and ineffective Democratic Congressional Party failed to half the onward march of the Christian Right soldiers. But the point Allison and Kumar make is plausible:

Turmoil in Iraq, the indictments of Tom DeLay and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, soaring gas prices and the Bush administration's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina all have played roles, analysts and lawmakers say.

Republicans also disagree about the Schiavo impact. Some conservative leaders, including Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Michael Franc, vice president of government relations for the Heritage Foundation, say it was minimal.

But most acknowledge it exacerbated existing fissures among congressional Republicans and helped Democrats find their backbone.

"It's become one more item on a checklist of grievances that the moderates have developed with respect to their conservative colleagues," Franc said.

It also gave Democrats the courage to challenge congressional leaders more forcefully, members of both parties said. Before Schiavo, Democrats helped pass a number of red-meat Republican priorities, including an energy bill that would have allowed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; a law making it harder to file for bankruptcy; and restrictions on class-action lawsuits.

After Schiavo, Democratic support for most Republican initiatives all but disappeared. (my emphasis)

They may be giving the Democrats more credit than they deserve in that last sentence. But this is important because the Republicans now have a harder time putting a "bipartisan" face on their highly partisan initiatives.

The big thing missing from their analysis is the effect of Bush's Social Security phase-out proposal. That also was a major factor in uniting the Democrats and producing alarm among independents and Democrats about how far the Republican Party is willing to go to roll the country back to the 1920s, maybe farther, as far as social and economic legislation go.

The blowback also affects the Republican Party more generally. The self-discrediting of the Christian Right among independents and Democrats does not significantly lessen their clout within the Republican Party. That's why we have pathetic scenes like that bold Maverick McCain endorsing the flat-earther position on forcing the "intelligent design" fraud to be taught in public schools as science.

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