Reply #38: DeLay quietly steps out of Schiavo spotlight

[Flammable Materials]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/politics/3103710

"WASHINGTON — Early this week, Tom DeLay assumed an uncharacteristically visible role in the Terri Schiavo case, pressing Congress to intervene, invoking God and attacking Schiavo's husband before television cameras and on the House floor. Now, with the prospects of any intervention essentially dashed in the courts, he has slipped out of the spotlight."

"DeLay, the House majority leader, is not alone. Republican responses, including those of President Bush and Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, have become muted in the face of the legal setbacks and of polls that show overwhelming disapproval of congressional intervention as well as a perception among the public that lawmakers attempting it were motivated by politics. A CBS News poll released Thursday found that 82 percent of respondents believed that the president and Congress should stay out of the case, while 13 percent thought they should intervene."

""Tom is doing everything backwards from the way I'd be inclined to do it," said one Democrat, Jim Wright, a fellow Texan who himself was forced out as speaker of the House in 1989 after failing to surmount challenges to his ethics and business dealings. "He seems to want to keep hostility at an agitated level.""

""The public is beginning to sense a whiff of extremism in the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "If it continues, it could prove very detrimental to them and good for us.""